The Pursuit of Truth
by JackieStarSister
Summary: A canon-compliant short story cycle about the Holt family's character development, relationships, and spirituality. Sometimes space exploration draws them together, but other times it pulls them apart. Rated T for mentions of puberty and warfare.
1. The Pursuit of Truth - Introduction

**Epigraph**

The heavens declare the glory of God;  
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.  
Day after day they pour forth speech;  
night after night they reveal knowledge.

~ Psalm 19:1-2, New International Version

* * *

 **Author's Note**

For reasons I cannot fathom, FFN has neglected to add Sam Holt as a character filter/label in the Voltron category. If you want that, please E-mail them with a request for it! If you don't know how to do so, click "Help" at the bottom of your screen to find instructions.

If you have comments or questions about the theology mentioned in this chapter, or any related topics, I'd love to hear from you in a review or message!

* * *

 **Table of Contents**

"Stars I Shall Find." Sam develops an affinity for scripture, which he tries to share with Colleen and pass on to their children.

"2 Stars." As they grow up, Matt and Katie's relationship shifts from a teacher-student model to a rivalry before they finally see each other as equals.

"A Thousand Miles." The Holts go camping, to Katie's displeasure, and talk about what to do if they get lost.

"Pictures of You." The Holts find ways to deal with periods of separation caused by boarding school and space missions.

"A Letter from Prison." Sam, Matt, and Shiro run into a situation they never expected, and wonder what it means for Earth.

"Papa Can You Hear Me?" Colleen and Katie try to investigate the Kerberos crew's disappearance.

"Close Every Door." Sam tries to keep himself and his friends sane, and Matt reflects on Shiro's sacrifice.

"Defying Gravity." Katie has an idea that will require another separation but might end with reunion. Colleen helps Katie transition to her new identity before she starts school.

"Learn To Be Lonely." Pidge adjusts to life at the Galaxy Garrison while Colleen gets used to living alone.

"Give a Little More Than You Take." Matt escapes prison, makes a new friend, and finds an opportunity to fight the Galra.

"Blackbird." On the night of a huge breakthrough, Pidge's neglect of her teammates results in them getting tangled up in her investigation.

"The Final Countdown." Pidge collaborates with other ex-Garrison cadets, and they find themselves taking literal and metaphorical leaps.

"Drive It Like You Stole It." Pidge gains new confidence as she and her new allies search for the lions and form Voltron.

"Bring Him Home." Colleen investigates to find out what happened the night Pidge and her teammates deserted the Garrison.

"He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother." Pidge tries to figure out her place on the new team, and wrestles with whether to reveal her true identity.

"Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again." Pidge reveals her secret, devises a new search method, and compares her situation to Allura's.

"I'll Try." Lance finds Pidge reading the Bible and offers a surprising comparison of religion and science.

"Giants in the Sky." Pidge tries to help the team stay together as they carry out a rescue, get separated, and find an unexpected ally.

"Universe Electric." Pidge strengthens her bond with the Green Lion, and both she and Keith gain new knowledge about their families.

"Nowhere to be Found." As the team adjusts to the loss of their leader, Pidge reaches out to Keith with some biblical parallels to their situation.

"Playing With the Big Boys." Pidge bonds with Shiro after he returns, and series of unexpected discoveries causes the team to change several paradigms.

"Hey Brother." Matt gets more involved with rebel activity, and leaves a coded message that leads two unexpected visitors to his listening outpost.

"Better Together." Matt and Pidge spend some time catching up, and work together to help the paladins on a mission.

"Hero in Me." The rebels team up with the Voltron Coalition, but their first major offensive might also be their last.

"Days in the Sun." Sam learns about quintessence and becomes a subject of a hostage exchange.

"It's My Turn Now." The paladins attempt to rescue Sam, who contemplates his next move.


	2. Stars I Shall Find

_Published October 20, 2016_

"Stars I Shall Find"

* * *

When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them? Yet you made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor. ~ Psalm 8:3-5

* * *

The Holts did not really practice any religion, but they thought and talked about spirituality on occasion. Over dinner they discussed the nuanced relationships between religion, science, and magic. Sam refused to see them as mutually exclusive. He pointed to the great scientists of history: plenty of theologians and religious leaders had made scientific breakthroughs, with no fear that science would lessen their belief in God or vise versa.

The Bible was a book that astronauts often brought on long-term missions. The Jewish and Christian astronauts made more use of it than anyone else, particularly on their respective sabbaths, but even the atheists, agnostics, and people of other faiths sometimes picked it up out of curiosity (a common trait in scientists).

It was on one of these trips that Sam began to read the Bible in his free time. He was drawn to it partly because two books in the canon bore his name. He wanted to know exactly who this other Samuel had been.

Sam came to respect the prophets and apostles who persevered in sharing the revelation they received. A prophet was someone who loved truth and tried to make it known to other people, even—especially—when they did not want to hear the truth. Sam sometimes wondered if this meant scientists were prophets of a sort. Both scientists and theologians had to exercise reason, grapple with facts and theories, contemplate the complexity of the universe.

Some books in the Bible even had verses that forbade worship of stars and planets and the practice of divination. Though they had by no means been men of science, Sam respected the ancient writers for recognizing what their contemporaries did not, that the celestial bodies themselves were not conscious beings and did not exert control over the universe. A Being that had created them would be far more amazing and truly worthy of worship. Sam identified with the psalmist's awe of the universe, and copied down the verses that he found most relatable.

When he returned to Earth, Sam bought a Bible and added it to the Holts' small library, alongside some staple volumes of history and poetry. He continued to read it when he had time to spare, which was not frequently, but regularly enough that his family became accustomed to it and even joined him in reading and talking about the ancient texts.

He studied the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles throughout his wife's first pregnancy. When their son was born, they named him after Saint Matthew, the tax collector who became an apostle, wrote one of the gospels, and was killed for trying to share the truths he had learned. Colleen did not particularly like the idea of naming her child after a martyr, but Sam pointed out that, like the prophets of the Old Testament, the apostles of the early church had sought and shared truth. Jesus called himself _the truth_ (John 14:6), and when Matthew met the truth, he followed it. To change one's entire life after the discovery of a new truth was beautiful and admirable.

On one thing the Holts were in agreement: they wanted their children to always pursue and and profess truth.

* * *

 **Music:** "Stars I Shall Find," based on a poem by Sara Teasdale


	3. 2 Stars

_Published November 9, 2016.  
Revised and expanded November 15, 2016.  
_

"2 Stars"

* * *

Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young. Instead set an example for believers in spirit, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity. ~ 1st Timothy 4:12

* * *

The Holts named their daughter after Katherine Johnson, the African-American NASA physicist and mathematician. They called her Katie for short, but after she learned to walk, Matt gave her a new nickname, "Pidge". He thought she looked like a pigeon, sticking out her neck to look wherever her curiosity led her, running in a way that was both agile and skittish when he chased her.

The two siblings pretended to be aliens and astronauts, combining the rules of Tag and Hide-and-Seek. Most of the time Matt played the evil extraterrestrial while Katie was the frenzied Earth scientist. Not that she knew what these words meant; all she knew was that her brother would tickle her if she didn't hide or outrun him. Their role-playing became more real to them when their father brought home prototype telescopes and freeze-dried astronaut food from work. They camped out in a tent shaped like a rocket to watch eclipses, meteor showers, and other rare phenomena.

As she grew, Matt insisted on being Katie's first and primary science teacher. This was partly to help her understand the rest of her family, partly because he wanted her to see what was so great about it, and partly to boost his own self-importance. Katie was the first and only person who looked up to Matt as a leader, a teacher, a role model.

When she was born, he made a scaled model of the solar system and hung it over her crib so she could learn the planets' appearances and orbits.

When she was learning how to talk, he showed her toy models of different spacecraft and taught her the names of each one.

When she moved into her own bedroom, Sam let Matt sit on his shoulders to glue glow-in-the-dark stars to her ceiling, arranging them in the exact shapes and arrangements of the constellations.

When Katie was learning to read, Matt gave her his old science books and illustrated biographies of famous scientists and astronauts.

He let her watch as he conducted his own experiments, some of them behind their parents' backs. He trusted her not to tell their mother. (The only time she broke this trust was when he did something truly dangerous.)

Matt only slowed down this enthusiastic education when, after years of steady acceleration, she seemed nearly caught up to his level of intellect. For the first time it seemed to dawn on Matt that, despite being younger than him, she might be just as smart, or even smarter. It had never occurred to him that his sister might be better than him at anything. It didn't seem right.

He worked hard to find words and topics that Katie would not understand; but she responded by downloading a digital dictionary and encyclopedia to match and even get ahead of his efforts. Their accidental incorrect application of words in their attempts to outshine each other's vocabulary much caused confusion, amusement, and frustration in their family.

Matt stopped inviting Katie to watch his experiments. Katie pretended not to notice, and started her own program of self-education. She read Matt's old textbooks and took online courses. She picked people's trash to find gadgets and build her own equipment. She took machines apart and put them back together.

When Sam was home between missions, Katie turned to him for advice and instruction, but never discussed her work in Matt's presence. Matt then competed for their father's attention as well, believed he needed it more than Katie, since he was closer to beginning his own training and career.

"Dad? Will you still be going on missions by the time I start doing that?" Matt was trying to plan out the next several years of his life, calculating how quickly he could go through the Galaxy Garrison rigorous program.

"Sure I will!"

"What about me?" Katie piped up. She liked the idea of exploring space with her father.

Sam thought for a moment, counting the years of training she would need and adding that to his age. "Well, I might be getting ready to retire by then. But I'm sure your brother will be glad to have you with him."

Matt raised his eyebrows, slightly taken aback by the idea of his kid sister tagging along on his mission. That was the scenario they had play-acted when they were younger, but now he thought that if he was lucky enough to have a crew of his own, he would want to make it his own chance to shine.

After a moment Matt smiled. "Sure. You can be our communications officer."

"What? I want to be a pilot!"

"She's smart enough to be the engineer," Colleen pointed out. "Why relegate her to communications?"

"She'll be our homing pigeon and carry messages for us. Get it, _Pidge_?"

Katie punched his arm, and smirked when he winced, ignoring Colleen's scolding. "Maybe I'll just form my own crew."

"Heh. You want to start a space race?"

"I'm game if you are."

"Hey, kiddos, in all seriousness," Sam intervened, "competition's a fine motivator, but don't get so caught up in it that you slow each other down. People are better off working with each other than trying to outdo each other. That goes for countries, crewmembers, even family members."

His words had a sobering effect on his children.

A few nights later, Matt stopped by Katie's room and casually asked if he could see what she was working on. Katie was cautious, not wanting him to criticize hard work or copy her intellectual property.

Matt won her confidence back by first showing her his own research project, consolidating archaeological evidence of alien life. "I have to be really thorough, because too many can be considered conspiracy theories, and my teachers won't give me credit for those." Then he shared with her a secret that he had not told anyone: "If there's life outside our planet, I want to be the first to discover it." He knew that she understood how seriously he took this goal, which other people were liable to laugh.

"I bet you will be," Katie said, with complete sincerity. Then, without waiting for him to ask, she led him into her room and showed him what she had been storing in her closet: an assortment of small, robotic machines, some built from store-bought kits, and others built from materials she had found on her own.

"Wow." Matt looked at her with a new respect. "That's really something, Pidge."

"Something …"

"Cool. Impressive. Probably better than I could have done at your age."

Hearing this, Katie realized she had forgotten how good her brother's approval made her feel.

Starting that night, Matt gradually began to accept Katie as something of an equal.

* * *

 **Music:** "2 Stars" from _Camp_ _Rock_ , because it kind of describes the distance that forms between Matt and Katie, and between the whole family at times. **  
**

If you don't know who Katherine Johnson is, read _Hidden Figures_ by Margot Lee Shetterly, or see the movie adaptation.


	4. A Thousand Miles

_Published September 3, 2017_

"A Thousand Miles"

* * *

"Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth." ~ John 17:17-19, New American Bible

* * *

Katie only went camping once, and thought it was more than enough for one lifetime.

It was August, almost the end of the kids' summer vacation, and Sam was home between assignments. The Holts wanted to do something special together, to bond before they resumed school and work. Somehow Matt had the idea of camping, something they had not done since Katie was born. Her idea of camping was setting up a tent and a telescope in their backyard. Sam did some quick research and decided to drive out to a forest reservation and hike up a small mountain, which would provide a good vantage point from which to watch the upcoming Perseids shower. Colleen thought a camping trip would help them break out of their reliance on technology. Matt thought it would be a fun opportunity to study evolutionary biology on a local level (meaning on Earth).

Only Katie was not particularly looking forward camping. At school she always preferred having recess indoors rather than outdoors. She loved learning, but nature did not appeal to her in any way.

In fact, Katie found the ideas behind the whole trip ironic. "If we're trying to connect with nature, shouldn't we not be driving so far? You know, increasing our usual carbon emissions?"

Sam and Colleen exchanged glances. Matt even looked up from his book on local wildlife, curious to see how they would answer. After a moment they both broke into smiles, with a weird combination of pride and sheepishness.

"I guess you have a point," Sam conceded. "Come to think of it, it be better for the environment if we, oh, I don't know, walked, or rented bikes—the kind you pedal with your feet."

Katie tried to hide her alarm at this offhand suggestion. "No—that's not what I—if we're on a deadline, we _should_ do whatever's fastest."

During the car ride, Sam lectured them on safety procedures, demonstrating his knowledge of how to survive in almost any environment or emergency. Katie let the excess information flow in and out of her mind, like water through a sieve, holding on to useful facts while discarding trivia that she was unlikely to ever need to recall it in the future.

To make her parents think she was really interested, she asked the most pertinent question she could think of. "What are you supposed to do if you get lost?"

"Well, if you've completely lost your bearings, it's usually best to stay where you are and wait for other people to find you."

Katie looked confused and skeptical of this idea. Sam tried to explain, "If you keep moving around when you already don't know where you are, you could end up going in circles, or you might just miss someone else who's moving around or looking for you. If people are looking for you, you should stay put—but it helps if you can find a way to let them know where you are, make it easy for them to spot you."

"Does that count in space, too?" Most people vaguely aware that space was big, but scientists and explorers like the Holts knew the actual and estimated sizes of galaxies, and the fact that space was mostly empty. It was almost impossible to imagine how it might feel to be lost in such incomprehensible vastness.

"Yes, I think the same rule applies."

Colleen considered the trip a success because no one got lost or injured. Sam thought it a success because they reached their destination in time. Even Matt thought it had been an enjoyable excursion.

Katie was the only one who felt miserable for most of the hike. The sun burned her skin, the mosquitos sucked her blood, the plants gave her poison oak, and the pollen made her sneeze. She could not see, smell, or touch everything that her family said was so wonderful.

She found some respite when they made it to the top of the mountain Sam had picked out as their vantage point. The terrain was rockier here, with less trees, and became level enough for them to spread out their blankets and set up a tent.

They did not need telescopes out here. The lack of city lights made the stars and planets appear distinct against the night sky.

"You know, stars are really weird, if you think about them," Matt said as they waited for the meteor shower to start.

"Everything about space is weird, if you think about it," Katie responded.

"That's probably true. But hear me out. You can only see stars at night, when there's no sunlight. But the sun is a star too; it just blocks out the light of other stars because it's the one closest to us. The only difference between them is their distance from us. Isn't it weird to think about—how the way we perceive things isn't how they actually are?"

Katie scoffed, smiling. "You're a scientist. If everything was the way it seemed, you'd have nothing to study."

Her family was in such high spirits that the half-serious, half-sarcastic reply made them laugh more than it probably merited. But hearing them laugh made her feel happier than she had felt so far on the trip. And when the stars started to shoot across the sky, she had to admit that the trip had not been a complete waste.

* * *

 **Music:** "A Thousand Miles" by Vanessa Carlton


	5. Pictures of You

_Published November 25, 2016_

"Pictures of You"

* * *

"Those who have insight will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever." ~ Daniel 12:3 _  
_

* * *

Katie inherited many of Matt's clothes throughout her childhood and even into her early adolescence. Sam and Colleen were too frugal to toss them aside for the sake of dressing her in clothes that were supposed to be acceptable for girls. Not that they did not have enough money, but they had to save up for the children's education funds, since both of them wanted to enroll at the Galaxy Garrison when they were old enough, and the tuition there was a considerable expense.

They did buy Katie some dresses and skirts, which she wore on special occasions. She liked them as a novelty, but found them too uncomfortable to wear regularly, since she had a tendency to sweat a lot. They were also impractical for exploring the nearby forests, her favorite kind of natural environment; they made it harder to climb trees and wrestle with her brother. And her mother would not let her wear such nice things while she worked with tools and machines and chemicals.

Once, a neighbor casually asked Katie if she was a girly-girl or a tomboy. Katie did not know, so she shrugged the question off. The truth, she later decided, was that she was neither. She did not conform to the social expectations of either gender. She was a girl, that was undeniable, but that fact did not dictate her style or interests. She was simply herself.

Katie did not have many friends, since her intellect alienated her somewhat from people her own age. She breezed through primary school, advancing two or three grades each year, so that she never stayed in a class long enough to develop lasting friendships with other students. This did not bother her too much, since she had Matt and her parents for company. Unlike her female peers, who seemed preoccupied with jewelry and makeup, her family members were interested in the same things as her.

The Holts adopted their dog at a time when Katie was starting to feel lonely for the first time in her life. Sam was preparing for on a months-long space mission, and Matt was about to begin boarding at the Galaxy Garrison to begin his own astronaut training. Colleen would be there for her, of course, but she had to keep the house in order and work to earn her own income. Katie really needed a playmate, someone who could match her energy and curiosity and keep her company without being pulled away by work or school.

It was Sam who suggested getting a pet. Katie might have preferred spending her time building something artificial, like a telescope or a vehicle, but a living thing would give her something to be responsible for, and provide some of the companionship she needed. Plus, a guard animal, like a dog, might make Sam's family safer while he was away.

The dog they chose, Bae-Bae, had lost her parents and been separated from her siblings. Matt was thrilled by the new addition to their family. Katie was a little slower, but she too came to love him.

They brought Bae-Bae home during a school vacation, so the kids had time to train and play with her together. She gave the family something to bond over besides space, which Colleen thought was probably healthy for their relationships and mental well-being.

Colleen was the only member of the Holt family who had no strong desire to visit or explore outer space. She loved learning about it, but she preferred to study the skies from the safety of a library or observatory.

She secretly hoped Sam would retire by the time Katie began her own career, so she would not be left with only the dog for company. As it was, only seeing her family's passionate enthusiasm for their studies made the months of separation bearable. Their shared interest in space exploration both drew them together and drew them apart.

During his vacations, Katie helped Matt prepare for each step in his training. She quizzed him with flash cards and timed his responses. She coached him through exercises to stay physically fit. She claimed that attacking him was a way to test his reaction time and reflexes, but this usually ended with the two of them wrestling and tickling each other.

Katie did not seem particularly bothered by the fact that all her help was bringing Matt closer to his long-term separation from her. Sometimes Colleen wondered if she was aware of it. But perhaps she was so used to him being away at school that, to her, his being away in space would be much the same.

When Matt reached the level at which he could go on a space mission, Sam requested that his son be assigned to his own crew for the upcoming mission to Pluto's moon Kerberos, where they would collect ice samples that might contain evidence of alien life forms. The approval of this request brought Colleen enormous relief, because now she would not have to worry about either of them being lonely or not getting along with their peers. While other young adults might have seen this as helicopter parenting, Matt was quite pleased with the arrangement, because it would give him the chance to realize his dream of discovering alien life.

They made their final dinner together a celebration. They made all the special dishes that were usually reserved for the holidays, since Sam and Matt would miss so many during their time away. Sam and Matt wore their military and school uniforms while Colleen and Katie wore their best dresses, an elegant green evening gown and an old-fashioned pink dress. Katie's hair was as unruly as ever, even when she pulled it back with a headband, but overall she thought did not look bad. She hoped that when her father and brother thought of her in the coming months, they would remember her looking like this. So she wore the girly outfit again the next day, when she and Colleen accompanied Sam and Matt to the space station and posed for pictures before the launch.

"Maybe next time we do this," Matt told her as they stood before the camera together, "it'll be before your first launch. Maybe even our first mission together."

Katie smiled at him before smiling at the photographer, who captured the image of the two siblings looking proud, hopeful, and confident.

* * *

 **Music:** "Pictures of You" by The Last Goodnight, which mentions soldiers, a mother waiting for her son to come home, scientists, and being "blocked by the governmental wall".


	6. A Letter from Prison

_Published December 5, 2016 for Matt Holt Week.  
Revised and reposted on May 3, 2017._

"A Letter from Prison"

* * *

For rigorous teachers seized my youth,  
And purged its faith, and trimmed its fire,  
Showed me the high, white star of Truth,  
There bade me gaze, and there aspire.  
Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:  
 _What dost thou in this living tomb?_

~ Matthew Arnold, "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse"

* * *

The prospect of discovering life outside of Earth had always excited Sam and Matt. The universe was so vast, it seemed wasteful for Earth to be the only planet with sentient beings.

Now, instead of discovering aliens, they had _been_ discovered _by_ aliens; and it was, without a doubt, the worst thing that ever happened to any of them.

As he ran alongside his father and Shiro, a memory surfaced in Matt's mind: he and Katie used to chase each other, one of them pretending to be an alien in pursuit, the other a scientist fleeing abduction. How ridiculous that seemed, now that it was truly happening. It was more terrifying than they had ever imagined.

 _Be careful what you wish for_. The Holt men had never found that old cliché truthful until now.

Shiro did not move, even when Sam and Matt were able to do so. After handcuffing the three of them, one of the purple humanoids removed Shiro's helmet to find out if he was still alive, and confirmed that he was. He regained consciousness while an alien who seemed to be in charge was delivering an audio-visual message through a screen. Somehow, the three astronauts understood what the aliens were saying—and it was not good.

In situations of conflict, Shiro's instinct was always to mediate, and, if necessary, to advocate for whichever party was not being heard or having its needs met. So he spoke, hoping that whatever translating technology allowed him to understand them would also work in reverse. "Please! We come from a peaceful planet." That might be a relative statement—they did not know how peaceful or violent other planets were by comparison—but Shiro followed it with statements he knew to be true. "We mean you no harm. We're unarmed!" His outspokenness was met with a blow to the head (maybe it was not hard by this alien race's standards, but they were _strong_ ), rendering him unconscious again.

They took Sam away for questioning first. Matt started to protest and tried to fight, but Sam told him to stop. "This is a way to find out what's going on," he said. Matt did not know if his father was being brave and rational, or trying to put on a brave face for his sake. It would be natural for a parent to hide his fear in front of his child, but Matt had come on this mission as his coworker, if not equal in rank, at least on a certain level of professionalism with him.

The huge purple guards led them down different hallways. One of them dragged Shiro behind him on the ground, while the one behind them pushed Matt forward. Through his helmet, Matt saw Shiro wake up. He turned his head from one side to the other, his eyes widening at what he saw. Matt's helmet and bent posture prevented him from following Shiro's gaze, but seeing that Shiro was afraid terrified him just as much as any of the current circumstances.

Once he got past the initial horror and incredulity of their situation, Sam tried to be rational, to view each moment the way a scientist would: observe, experience, analyze.

They had some strokes of luck, or providence, at least on a superficial level. For one thing, the air inside this alien race's vessels was breathable. They could not be certain of the long-term effects on their bodies, but for now, at least, they could accomplish that involuntary bodily function.

Sam made the younger astronauts wait while he slowly taste-tested the rations given to them, to see if the human body could ingest them safely. There were likely to be many more variables when it came to food: tolerance and digestibility might vary from one person to another, the same way allergies did. But after taking increasingly larger portions, Sam found that he was able to keep his food down, and told Shiro and Matt they could try it if they wanted. Eventually hunger won out.

When they saw how many inmates the Galra kept enslaved or imprisoned, they realized that they may not have been the first people from Earth to meet aliens. There had been other cases of astronauts going missing or presumed to have died in space. There may have been some who, like the Kerberos crew, were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Matt did not understand how Sam and Shiro could be so calm, handle everything so coolly. Even after the shock wore off, how could they not be terrified, angry, frustrated?

Sam tried to explain that he was just as scared, upset, and anxious to escape and find a way home (if that was possible), but also knew how to employ patience. It was something all scientists and military families, had to practice. It did not mean simply waiting for circumstances to change, though; it meant working toward a goal while accepting the reality that the process might take a long time and many failures. Shiro summed it up succinctly: "Patience yields focus." That was true, too: it helped them to think more clearly about each task at hand.

There _were_ days when they felt the same high negative emotions. Shiro was frequently angered by the Galra's treatment of them, and of weaker prisoners. He also became indignant whenever he saw stronger prisoners taking advantage of weaker ones; he stepped in and set things straight.

Sam's anger was less frequent and less noticeable, but lasted longer each time. He knew how to hide his frustration, but it smoldered and threatened to weigh him down with pessimism. He was one of the smartest and most educated people on Earth, yet here he was treated as less than human—well, these other species weren't human either, but they seemed to have some distinction between people and animals. Despite all his natural intelligence and rigorous education, he could not protect his son, his crew, or his planet.

Learning to explore space had always made them feel empowered, but now, for the first time in their lives, they felt utterly helpless.

As the three humans learned more about the Galra Empire's aggressive expansion, they became fearful for Earth and its inhabitants. The Galra had already brushed the edges of the Milky Way; what if they explored that solar system further? Would they consider it worthwhile if only one of its planets supported life forms? Did the other planets have resources the Galra would want? Shiro tried to ask these questions when they had the chance, but their fellow prisoners did not know the answers, and their captors refused to answer. The uncertainty only increased their fear.

Shiro imagined how the Galaxy Garrison's training program might be different if they knew about aliens, particularly the hostile kind. Would they try to prepare students to face situations like this? Would they have any chance of success? Perhaps the best thing for Earth's overall welfare would be to end exploratory missions and focus on defending Earth against potential invaders.

Matt had once heard, in a history class, a story about five brothers who served in the American navy during World War II. They insisted on being assigned to the same ship, but the ship sank, so the family was left with no sons. From then on, the navy made sure to enforce its policy of not assigning immediate family members together.

The Galaxy Garrison had allowed Matt to go on this pioneering mission, despite his young age, because his father would be the one supervising him. But maybe that had been a mistake. If they had not have gone together, one of them would still be home to comfort the rest of their family.

Colleen would probably never let Katie become an astronaut now. She would not want to risk losing another family member, especially the last of her immediate family, her only remaining child, her only daughter.

Matt felt horrible for causing this end to Katie's dream, but then he had a thought that felt like a betrayal: maybe it would be better if Katie never entered space. He would never want her to be in this situation. Tough and smart as she was, these aliens were beyond anything she had ever experienced or imagined, in the worst way.

Was it right for them to hope that she never achieved her goals? Possibly, since she did not know what their achievement might entail.

* * *

 **History:** The five brothers killed at sea were George, Francis, Joseph, Madison, and Albert Sullivan, who died when the ship they served on, the USS _Juneau_ , was sunk on November 13, 1942. Like Matt, they left behind a sister, Genevieve.

 **Music:** "A Letter from Prison" by Gilbert Hovsepian. I highly recommend its music video, directed by Joseph Hovsepian, produced by Sheryl Fountain, executive produced by Voice of the Martyrs Canada. When I hear about situations of injustice, especially persecution and genocide, it makes me think of stories like the Holt family and reminds me that these fictional stories have real-life counterparts.


	7. Papa Can You Hear Me?

__Most of the content of this chapter was first published in my erstwhile story "Time to Man Up".  
New version p_ublished December 21, 2016. Happy holidays!_

"Papa Can You Hear Me?"

* * *

"I was born with one purpose, to speak the truth." ~ John 18:37

* * *

Colleen had heard about and read accounts of enough failed space missions to know that such tragedies could potentially happen to her husband or, when they had their turn, her children. She accepted the reality that their work carried elements of danger, but she chose not to let fear control her thoughts and emotions. She acknowledged it and compartmentalized her anxiety, lining it up alongside her more dominant, positive attitudes toward her family's work: pride, excitement, admiration, hope.

Katie never harbored fear for her relatives' safety, mostly because she did not catch on to her mother's well-hidden fear. Of course she knew how many things could go wrong, having read about failed missions and studied every pilot training manual ever published; but she also knew that her father was one of the smartest men in the world. Her confidence in him was not just a child's faith in her parent; his competence was an objective fact. With him as the commander and Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane as the pilot of the Kerberos Mission, Katie knew her brother was in the safest hands possible.

When the worst case scenario actually happened, it was not in the way Colleen had imagined, nor how any military would have expected. There was no electronic message, no phone call, no messenger on their doorstep.

The news came to them via the most mainstream, broad-casting medium of communication: the television. They learned about the Kerberos crew's disappearance and presumed deaths at the same time as the rest of the world, whose eyes were watching the mission that went farther than any human had traveled before. The news reporter called it "a sad day for humanity," as though the tragedy was that astroexplorers had failed to reach the edge of the solar system, rather than the loss of three beloved human beings.

The delivery and subtext of the news was just as upsetting as the news itself. How could the Galaxy Garrison let this information leak to the media before sharing it with the crew members' families? How could the newscasters report the hypothesis as if it were fact? How could they attribute the disappearance to pilot error when Takashi Shirogane was the one piloting the ship and Sam Holt was the one leading the crew?

The media made it sound like the story was over when really it was in limbo. _Presumed dead_ was not definite. Space was so vast, the three lost astronauts could be anywhere, dead or alive. The story would not have a resolution until they were found.

If they were dead, then their loved ones could mourn—which admittedly would be worse than this suspended anxiety, but would at least put an end to their uncertainty. On the other hand, if they were alive, they needed to be found!

Katie had always been naturally curious, seeking explanations and extracting truth. But she had never wanted to know anything as badly as this: What happened to Samuel and Matthew Holt?

It was bad enough that they were gone. What made it worse, to top it all off, was the Galaxy Garrison's claim that they were lost due to their own errors. They were using Sam, Matt, and Shiro as scapegoats and covering up the truth (or their ignorance of the truth, which was just as bad; it was far more honorable to admit ignorance than feign knowledge).

After the announcement, the Holts' friends and neighbors periodically stopped by their house to deliver gifts of food and expressions of condolence. It was all Katie could do to restrain herself from slamming the door in their pitying faces. The only good thing about their visits was that they saved her and her mother the trouble of grocery shopping and cooking.

Everyone seemed to expect Katie and her mother to shut down. On the contrary, they became busier than ever.

Colleen spent hours on the phone and on the road. She called different organizations connected with the Kerberos mission. She contacted Shiro's family, friends, and mentors to find out how much they knew or might be able to find out. She pounded on the doors of Galaxy Garrison officials' offices and even their homes, and refuted their excuses until they forced her to leave the premises.

Katie did what she could to help her mother. She kept the house running smoothly by taking care of their everyday needs: she planned their meals, laundered their clothes, and took the dog out for walks. She spent the rest of her waking hours looking for answers—poring over her computer, hacking into government websites, and sneaking into the Garrison itself.

When they were able to spend time together, they compared and consolidated their notes. They read and annotated the logs of past failed missions. They reexamined all the communication the Kerberos crew had with the Galaxy Garrison and their families in the five months between the launch and the disappearance.

Inactivity was their enemy. When they were inactive, they were more likely to cry. They cried alone. They cried together. When one of them started, the other tried to comfort them, but it was hard not to give in to the same emotions that prompted the tears.

Colleen seemed neither angry nor surprised when the Galaxy Garrison security team brought Katie home and accused her of trespassing and hacking into classified files. In fact, her lack of a visible reaction unnerved Katie.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" Katie demanded after a period of silence.

"What can I say? I don't blame you for wanting answers. I might have done the same thing, only I don't know the tech well enough." She was upset with the Galaxy Garrison for hiding the truth about her husband and son, for implying that the crew was responsible for their disappearance, and for rough-handling her daughter when she tried to find answers. Yet she was not angry so much as tired. Sad. Bereaved without mourning, without healing, because uncertainty kept the wound open and raw. They could not get used to Sam and Matt's absence, because that would be giving up on them, when there was still a possibility that they were alive, when they might be waiting for help from Earth.

She only became concerned when the Garrison forbade Katie from setting foot on their property. "Are you upset that you won't be able to go there?" Colleen asked Katie. "I know you always wanted to be a pilot, too."

Katie shrugged. She had always wanted to follow in her father and brother's footsteps, but now making a name for herself as a scientist, pilot, or astroexplorer did not seem to matter. Now she could only think of one reason to want to study or visit outer space: to find her family. Even if they were dead, she owed it to them to find out the truth.

* * *

 **Music:** "Papa, Can You Hear Me?" by Barbara Streisand, from the movie _Yentl_ , which is about a woman who disguises herself as a man in order to attend a school … wait a second … ;)

 **Disclaimer:** The idea of the old mission logs is from tumblr user okaybutvoltron.


	8. Close Every Door

_Published June 18, 2017. Happy Father's Day!_

I dedicate this chapter to my father, who, like Sam, has always supported, encouraged, and believed in his children.

* * *

"Close Every Door"

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. ~ 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

* * *

The prisoners struggled to keep track of time. Of course, in outer space, time was rather relative, but the Earth astronauts had always maintained a routine based on Earth's units of measurement. Now they had no devices to tell them what time it was at various locations on Earth. They were kept on alien vessels more than planets, so they could not observe the sky long enough to identify rhythms in rotation, orbit, sunlight, starlight, moonlight. A few times, they tried to improvise clocks using water, gravel, and whatever other items they could obtain without rousing the guards' suspicions. But eventually they stopped thinking in terms of hours and days, and instead measured time by how often they were fed, the stubble growing on their faces, and length of their nails and hair.

Sam wished they had a way to keep records of everything they were experiencing. He could only imagine the field day that Earth's scientific community would have upon finding out that so many alien life forms existed, with their own technologies and cultures. Since he had no writing implements, he tried to repeat and memorize information so that he would not forget it. If he escaped, he would write it down and try to share it with his home world.

They truly had no idea how long it would be before he saw Earth or any Earthlings again, if that day ever came. Sam did not want to forget the names and faces or his loved ones, or any part of his own identity, what his place on Earth had been. At first he tried not to think too much about his family, friends, and colleagues on Earth, because it hurt too much and caused him to worry; but as more time passed, the fear of forgetting them prompted him to go over their names, envision their faces, and remember all the little details.

 _My name is Samuel Holt. Samuel is the name of an Old Testament prophet. Others include Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Samuel Adams, Samuel Morris._ He reminded himself of his friends' and family members' names and birthdays, which related to quite a few other topics. _Matt has the same name as an Apostle, the tax collector and author of one of the Gospels. Katie was born April 3 and named after Katherine Goble Johnson. Shiro's full name is Takashi Shirogane; he was born on February 29 but celebrates his birth on February 28._

Sam thought of all the Galaxy Garrison faculty and their respective achievements. He had taught, trained, and mentored too many students to remember all of them, but some stood out as particularly promising, and had gone on to have successful careers of their own. Sam had always liked running into alumni, or receiving them in his office or at his house, and discussing what they had been up to since graduation. Many thanked him for the impact he had on their lives.

To keep their minds active and sharp, Sam tried to test their memory. When he exhausted personal information and memories from his own experiences, he challenged them to list other categories of names and facts: historical figures, state capitals, books of the Bible (he had always tripped up on the deuterocanonical Apocrypha), Latin roots and mottoes and classifications, the mythological namesakes of planets and constellations.

"Ad astra per aspera?"

Shiro remembered, "That can be translated as 'to the stars through difficulties' or 'a rough road leads to the stars.'

Sam nodded and continued, "Ad astra per alas fideles?"

Matt answered, "'To the stars on the wings of the faithful ones.'"

"Per audacia ad astra?"

"'Through boldness to the stars.'"

"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via?"

"'There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.'"

"And what is it from?"

"Seneca the Younger's _Hercules Furens_."

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori?"

Shiro answered, "'It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country,' from Horace." In the past, when learning about all the possible ways that an astronaut could die, Shiro had mentally substituted "patria" with "planeta," thinking the same principle applied to one's planet, in the sense of making progress in research, knowledge and exploration. Now, though, as they heard more about the Galra's conquest of the known universe, Shiro could see only the militaristic meaning in the motto.

Every day they focused on a different subject. On one day it would be important dates in world history. On another it would be famous works of literature. The day that was both most enjoyable and most distressing was when they focused on music, trying to remember all their favorite singers and musicians, and realizing they had already forgotten the words to many songs they used to know.

Sam wondered what had happened to their ship's Bible. He did not know whether to hope that it had been found and preserved or lost. He had always thought if aliens were discovered, missionaries of all kinds of religions would want to go out and convert aliens. He doubted that anyone in outer space could read it—but then again, they had some kind of unseen technology that translated the speech of various alien races into each other's native spoken languages (not unlike the Apostles on Pentecost), so maybe they had something similar for written language too.

What would aliens think of humanity if they deciphered the Bible? What would they think of the text itself, if they had no one to explain its complex origins and various interpretations? The morality of the New Testament might do these oppressive and oppressed people some good, but the wars and ancient customs of the Old Testament might inspire the Galra to new levels of barbarism.

The rumors of experimentation on prisoners made Matt think of slavery in the United States and the Holocaust in Europe. In both cases, very intelligent doctors had used human beings, instead of lab rats or guinea pigs, as test subjects for scientific experiments. The doctors had considered the African slaves and European Jews to be less human than them, or else had not cared about performing such painful and damaging tests on unwilling human beings.

Did the Galra see their prisoners as animals rather than people? Did they just want unpaid labor and brutal entertainment, regardless of who provided it? Did they think their species, or race, or whatever they were, was superior to all others? Philosophical questions emerged from the scientific: What _was_ the difference between alien people and alien animals? How did one determine personhood? What was personhood?

One story from Matt's history classes stood out when he thought about the Holocaust. He had read about a priest who was imprisoned at Auschwitz for opposing the Nazis. When some prisoners escaped, ten men were randomly selected to be executed in their stead, as a deterrent to others. One of them was a father who worried about that would happen to his children if he died, so the priest offered to die in his place. The soldiers accepted the bargain, and the priest was killed while the other man lived to see the liberation of the camps and the end of the war. The sad irony was that the man's children were killed before they could be reunited, so the only life saved was the father's, while his family did not benefit from the priest's sacrifice.

After being spared from the gladiatorial arena, Matt thought he now knew how the rescued man had felt. The other prisoners thought he was in shock because his friend had attacked him—and at first he had been—but he was more shocked by his friend's true intentions and lack of fear for his own life. And yet it was just like Shiro to put his crew first. Their original mission no longer mattered, but keeping his companions safe was still his priority.

Shiro's selfless action, and his final instruction, made Matt determined to survive and find his family. That would be the best way to honor Shiro and make his sacrifice worthwhile.

* * *

 **Music:** "Close Every Door" from _Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat_ by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

 **History:** The priest at Auschwitz was Saint Maximilian Kolbe. The man he saved was Franciszek Gajowniczek, who lived another 53 years and was present at Kolbe's canonization in 1982.


	9. Defying Gravity

_Originally published as part of a oneshot in October 2016.  
Re-posted as two separate chapters in January 2017.  
Combined January 2018._

"Defying Gravity"

* * *

"… none of us is obligated to go into a fire and save someone else from a burning building. But that all changes if you're a parent and the person in that burning building is your child. If that's the case, not only would everyone understand if you ran in to get your child—they'd practically _expect_ it of you. … In my life, though, that building was on fire, one of my children was in it—and the only opportunity to save her was to send in my other child, because she was the only one who knew the way." ~ Jodi Picoult, _My Sister's Keeper_

* * *

Katie got the idea from _Gattaca_ , one of her family's many science fiction movies. Its protagonist had to hide his true identity and impersonate another man in order to fulfill his dream of becoming an astronaut. He did it in a society where genetic capabilities dictated what jobs people could get and everyone had to prove their identity on a daily basis using DNA samples. The Galaxy Garrison's admissions program was far less stringent, which meant it would be much easier to impersonate someone … or simply make up a new identity.

Once she made her decision, Katie considered applying in secret and simply leaving when the semester began. She did not want to endure more farewells, or give her mother the chance to forbid her from going. She could imagine the arguments, the pleas, the prohibitions: _"You're all I have left! I won't lose you too!"_ But running away without a word, or even leaving behind a note, would probably cause Colleen even more anxiety and grief. Katie knew by now that not knowing, not having time to prepare, and not being able to say goodbye were the worst circumstances in which to endure separation from loved ones.

So Katie sat down with her mother at the table where they had eaten their last family meal, and said plainly, "I have a plan to find out where Dad and Matt are."

In one sense, that was all they had been trying to do for weeks. But in another sense, their work had been mainly research with a general direction but no precise destination. A series of concrete steps toward a clear goal would be quite welcome.

"How?" Colleen asked, not knowing what to expect at this point.

"I'm going to apply for enrollment at the Galaxy Garrison."

That was something Katie had planned to do for a long time, but now things were different. "You've been banned, Katie. They won't accept you."

"No, but they might accept Pidge Gunderson."

Colleen was confused, because she recognized Matt's nickname for Katie, but not the surname. "Who?"

Katie stood and turned her back to her mother. She took Matt's glasses from her pocket and put them on. Then she pulled her long hair back, twisted it into a bun, and stuffed it under a hat. When she turned around to face her mother, her resemblance to Matt was so great that the sight of her made Colleen's heart ache. "Pidge Gunderson is a precocious fifteen-year-old … boy."

Colleen covered her mouth, stifling a sound that may have been either a laugh or a sob. "Oh, Katie …"

"I'm our best chance of finding Dad and Matt," Katie insisted. "I'll be close enough to look for answers, and I'll get the training and opportunities I need to go look for them, if that's what it takes." She paused, waiting for her mother to protest, but Colleen said nothing. Finally Katie asked bluntly, "Are you going to stop me?"

Colleen moved slowly: she braced her hand against the table, pushed out her chair, stood, came up to Katie, and hugged her fiercely.

For the first time since making her decision, Katie's resolve almost wavered, because in order to find two members of her family she would have to leave the only one she still had. Both of them felt close to tears.

After a moment Colleen drew her head back, held Katie by the shoulders, and knelt to her eye level. "You will update me every day, whether or not you've made any progress. If you're going away, I need to know whether you're alright."

Katie nodded, tight-lipped, and hugged her mother again. "Thank you," she murmured. Her mother's approval had never meant so much to her as it did now.

Letting go of her last immediate family member would be Colleen's biggest sacrifice yet. But if this plan worked, all the pain that came with it would be worthwhile.

The two Holt women switched roles somewhat during the months before the school term started. Since the announcement about the Kerberos mission, Colleen had been busy with phone calls and research while Katie quietly supported her. Now, Katie was the busy one while her mother offered assistance.

Katie hacked into all the databases necessary to fabricate information and documents for her new identity. Colleen signed the fake birth certificate and enrollment application, claiming Pidge Gunderson as her nephew. She did not tell Katie this, but if the charade was discovered, she thought it better that the blame and repercussions fall on her rather than Katie. Better for her to be in jail and Katie placed in a foster home than for Katie to be placed in juvenile detention.

The information that really mattered to the Garrison was authentic. Katie's medical records, intelligence quotient, and tested knowledge of relevant areas of science made the admissions counselors more than willing to accept her application, even though she was younger than the average student.

Colleen cried when the acceptance letter came. She tried to pass it off as pride in Katie's achievement and renewed hope that they would find Sam and Matt, but they both knew she was also sad and afraid now that her last immediate family member was leaving. Katie also felt a blend of emotions: she was relieved that her ruse had worked so far, that she had jumped this first and most important hurdle; but now that her plan was in motion, she had to make the transition from preparation to actual execution. She had much more to do than anyone else accepted to the Garrison.

Katie experimented with her clothes (many of which she had inherited from Matt), and found the right combination of turtleneck and training bra to hide her still-developing female figure. Colleen bought her clothes with lots of pockets, and even sewed in extra, hidden compartments where she could hide sensitive items, like data chips or feminine hygiene products.

They talked through potential problems that might arise. Katie would have to be extremely careful in preparing for and dealing with her menstrual cycle. She could not throw away feminine products in the men's bathrooms without giving away her identity, so during that time of the month she would have to use the few unisex bathrooms that were available. She and her mother devised clever ways to smuggle the products into her dormitory, even through the Garrison's mail inspection. If she ran out of those, she would have to improvise some kind of padding that she could change and wash in private.

Katie had always worn contact lenses, but she worried that the Galaxy Garrison staff would recognize her if they saw her face in plain view. So she tried wearing a pair of Matt's glasses, which had the same prescription she needed. It made her look very much like Matt, but she reasoned it would be better for Pidge Gunderson to remind people of Matthew Holt than of his sister. Plus, carrying something that belonged to Matt made Katie feel a a little more connected to him.

Colleen tried to call her daughter "Pidge" for the last week or so before she went to stay at the school, to help Katie get used to answering to that name. She offered to cut her hair, but Katie said wanted to do it herself. Her hair was going to be messy no matter what; in fact, that was one aspect of her appearance that would not change. She might as well take that natural disarray as far as it would go. But she left it until the last possible moment.

The night before the school term began, Katie and Bae-Bae slept with Colleen in the parents' large bed. In the morning, Katie made every other preparation before finally picking up the scissors. Somehow, cutting her hair had a greater sense of finality than anything else she had done to create this new persona. She tried not to think of it as severing a tie to her old life or identity. Changing her name, perceived gender, and known history would not change anything about her personality and core identity. Besides, ultimately, the chance to search for Sam and Matt made all of these changes and sacrifices worthwhile.

When she was done, she found her mother in the kitchen, packing peanut butter cookies and other home-cooked food for her to bring.

"How do I look?" she asked.

The short hair and glasses made her look like Matt, but Colleen tried to ignore that and imagine she was looking at a stranger. "You look … well, like a boy. A boy who hasn't hit puberty."

She smiled, her eyes soft with understanding. "Good. Let's hope everyone else thinks so."

Colleen tried to return the smile, but it was shaky, and her eyes were already watery. She inhaled deeply to calm herself, but released her breath as a sigh. "I always wanted you to be brave, and I'm glad to see you are … but I wish you didn't have to be. I wish there was another way."

"I know. I wish that too. But right now I think it's the best way."

Colleen came up to her, holding a small item. "I made you something. It's a digital Bible, with a file of your father's favorite verses."

"I don't know if I'll have time—"

"I know, but I'd like you to have them. They've helped me when I missed your father. They might help you too."

She closed her hand tightly around the device. "Thanks."

Colleen touched her daughter's face, pushing aside a few stray strands of hair. "Katie … Pidge. Be careful."

"I will."

Colleen hugged her. "I'm proud of you—and I know your father and brother are too."

"We're proud of you, too," her daughter informed her. "Not many moms would do as much as you've done for us."

"Sometimes I think I'm crazy to have done any of it."

"This whole situation is crazy. Maybe we have to be a little crazier than the rest to get through it."

That was the last time she heard her mother laugh before leaving.

* * *

Music: "Defying Gravity" from _Wicked_ by Stephen Schwartz, and "Even a Miracle Needs a Hand" by Maury Laws, from the 1974 Rankin/Bass Christmas special _'Twas the Night Before Christmas_


	10. Learn to be Lonely

_Published January 11, 2017.  
Re-posted with new material on May 14, 2017.  
_

"Learn To Be Lonely"

* * *

It is your obligation to speak the truth, and everyone can either take it or leave it. But truth must be in us. We live in such poverty of the truth today. ~ Mother Angelica

* * *

Samuel Holt valued truth higher than almost anything else. He had raised his children to be truthful, seek knowledge, cultivate wisdom, and speak out against those who told lies or spread misinformation.

Though she was operating under a false identity, Katie—now trying to think of and refer to herself as Pidge—still tried to avoid telling outright lies. She figured that as long as she managed not to cross that line, she would not be going completely against the ethics her father had instilled in her.

There were times when she had to lie to maintain her cover, and she felt guilty, wondering what her father would think of her; but she tried to compensate for her untruthfulness by calling out people who told lies. It was maddening how frequently people mentioned the Kerberos mission and how carelessly they repeated the Garrison's misguided conclusions about what had happened.

Katie used to talk aloud in order to work through difficult problems. Usually one of her family members served as her audience, depending on the topic she was wrestling with. Even if they said nothing in response, just verbalizing her thoughts made them easier to examine objectively. That process was no longer an option at the Garrison, where Pidge had to keep her research a secret, so she tried doodling instead. She was not artistic, but she found she liked it more than she had expected to; it was almost therapeutic, not having to be so precise as in her data collection and analysis.

Pidge tried to conceal or carry all of her possessions that would give away her identity or help in her research. If there was ever an occasion to evacuate, she would have to bring her data with her; and if the teachers ever had a surprise inspection, she could not let them discover her identity or confiscate her equipment or notes. She lived with the mindset that any day might be her last at the Garrison, with the chance of being discovered or having to run away always on the horizon.

In order to get around the Garrison after curfew and infiltrate areas that were off-limits, Pidge figured out how to hack into the security cameras, and replaced their live feed with recorded footage of the security officers passing at regular intervals. She had to schedule it based on when each individual guard was on patrol. She was careful to only change the feed at the times and places in which she was active, not wanting to jeopardize the overall safety and security of the school. She never went outside of the Garrison, so there was no need for her to change footage of people entering and leaving the grounds.

Pidge kept daily status reports to her mother vague enough that, if intercepted, no one could deduce any of her secrets. She did not share anything about her hacking, research, or observations. As a result, Colleen came to know more about the social scene of the Galaxy Garrison than the progress of her daughter's mission.

 _I got assigned as a communications officer. My pilot and engineer seem friendly. I only wish I had time to spend with them outside of training._

 _Blending in it easier than I expected. The classwork is easy too. It's the hands-on team-building stuff we have trouble with._

 _People mention Kerberos pretty often. When they do, it's hard to keep my opinion to myself._

 _My team's engineer brought baked goods from his visit home. He gave me some peanut butter cookies._

 _One of the flight simulation options is a rescue mission to Kerberos. I don't know what to make of this._

 _I'm a lousy communications officer. I wish they'd train me as a pilot already.  
_

 _Getting lots of data but not sure what it means or how much is relevant to me._

 _I think my team's pilot has ADHD. I'm not sure how he got this far in the program, or whether it'll be safe to really fly into space with him._

 _I think something big is going to happen, but I don't know what or when._

 _My crew failed a simulation today. I'm starting to wish I'd spent more time with my teammates when they invited me. Maybe then we'd get along better. Now they don't even invite me anymore._

These updates were the highlights of Colleen's days, reassuring her that she was not alone.

With all three members of her family gone, she had more time to herself than she had had in years, probably since before she was married. It was almost uncomfortable. She had always had at least one person to spend time with. Less people meant less cooking and cleaning to do. She was more meticulous in her housework than ever before, but still finished it more quickly than she ever had when Katie was living there.

Bae-Bae was her main source of comfort and company. She gave Colleen a reason to get up each day and maintain some sense of a routine. Colleen walked her twice a day, and went out to buy groceries and visit the library a few times a week.

Colleen tried to stay vigilant about what was happening in space and in the scientific community. She tried to spend more time reading. She kept up with academic and scientific circles, continued to watch the news channels and read the magazines, even though she took the information from their journals with a grain of salt.

But she also tried reading for leisure too, the way she had when she was younger. Sometimes, just to fill the silence in the house, she read aloud to Bae-Bae, who curled up next to her on the couch or on her bed. She studied Sam's favorite Bible books, and reread her favorite volumes of poetry and classic literature. It was a bittersweet pastime, because she associated so many books with the happier times in which she had read them.

Matt and Katie had always preferred to read nonfiction, but Colleen had coaxed them into reading some children's classics— _The Little Prince_ , _Peter Pan_ , _A Wrinkle in Tim_ e—on the pretext that they were about stars and planets. They used to read those stories together when Sam was away on missions. They had related to the characters who were away from family and friends on other planets. Colleen rifled through these books now, but could not bring herself to reread them, when her own story was still unfolding, her family's fate undetermined.

Unfortunately, she kept seeing her family members in fictional characters, even in the most unexpected stories. Watching Shakespeare movies, she saw Matt and Katie in Sebastian and Viola (who pretended to be a man), siblings who were separated and thought the other dead. She identified with Mrs. Murry, wondering where her scientist husband was, and with Mrs. Darling, wanting to leave the window open so her children could return.

Looking through an anthology of Greek myths, plays, and epic poems, an illustration of Daedalus and Icarus nearly moved her to tears. But then she turned to the section containing the _Odyssey_ , and smiled as she read about Odysseus' reunions with Telemachus and Penelope. Everyone else had believed that Odysseus was dead, and urged his wife and son to move on. They had just about given up hope. But he came back to them in the end. And while they waited, Penelope kept fooling the suitors who urged her to believe that Odysseus was dead. They were just as gullible as the Galaxy Garrison officials.

* * *

Author's Notes

Music: "Learn to be Lonely" by Minnie Driver, from _The Phantom of the Opera_ (2004)

The theory that Lance has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been circulating around Tumblr, and as someone who as ADD and knows people who have ADHD I think it quite plausible.

Someday, I would like to write a crossover of VLD and _Twelfth Night_. If you haven't read or seen the play, go out and read it, or read the novelization "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Illyrian Madness" by ModernDayBard here on FFN, and you might see as many perfect potential parallels as I have. The only reason I'm putting it off is because I want to wait until the show is over so I will have all possible material to work with.

1-11-17: Something really cool happened to me a few days ago. On Sunday, the feast of the Epiphany, I went to a church service and heard a sermon about the Magi and what we can learn from them. The pastor described the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism and how one of its tenets was, I quote, "the pursuit of truth"! Hearing my own title used in a sermon seemed like a seal of divine approval.


	11. Give a Little More Than You Take

_Published May 25, 2018_

 _Takes place sometime before "Escape from Beta Traz."_

"Give a Little More Than You Take"

* * *

He who gains intelligence is his own best friend; he who keeps understanding will be successful. ~ Proverbs 19:8, New American Bible

* * *

By now Matt should have known to stay on his toes, to avoid being caught off guard by unexpected events. And yet, weeks and months in the monotonous prison system, without Shiro or his father to encourage him, had dulled his mind and body. So when the big moment he had been hoping and praying for finally came, it took him completely by surprise.

He was almost too shocked to react, except to shield his face from the dust and debris thrown up by the explosions. Some part of his brain wondered how the explosives worked, what materials could destroy the Galra infrastructure that seemed so impenetrable to the prisoners. Most of them were trying to either hide or run, though neither action was very efficacious: there was nowhere to hide, and running might put them in greater danger.

Then there were new people, neither Galra nor sentries, rushing through the chaos. Their features were hidden by masks and scarves, but judging from their builds, they did not seem to be of any species Matt had learned to recognize. One of them stopped long enough to pull his arm, trying to get him to stand and run. "Come on," a voice he thought might be female urged him.

"What are you doing?" It was all Matt could think to say as he tried to keep up.

Her answer was impatient. "I'm giving you the chance to escape. You don't want to stay here, do you?"

He understood that it was a rhetorical question, but his mind still had difficulty believing that this was really happening. Or maybe it was his heart that was incredulous. Matt's mind raced through his options in a matter of seconds. His father would want him to escape when he had the chance, but Matt didn't want to leave without him and Shiro. On the other hand, Matt had no idea if they were in this facility or at another far away. What if he was abandoning them without even knowing it? What would his parents want him to do? Different aphorisms came into his mind, some contradicting each other. _Beggars can't be choosers. Out of the frying pan and into the fire_. He didn't know who these people were, and he didn't know whether it mattered.

This was the only opportunity that had presented itself in months. He would be an idiot not to take it. He might have a better chance of finding his father and friend from the outside.

Another explosion created a new exit. Matt squinted and coughed as they ran through it. He tried to cover his mouth to avoid inhaling more dust and smoke. The alien with the feather-like ears held onto his right arm and pulled him along after her. Matt didn't like this blind dependence, didn't like not knowing what was going on, but he knew there was no going back.

There was a ship waiting, confirming what Matt had suspected: the masked aliens had broken in, and were helping prisoners break out. Matt boarded, fighting back his many questions, saving them for when they were a safe distance from the prison. He was one of only a handful of prisoners on this vehicle.

Both before and during the takeoff, explosions shook the vehicle, and the prisoners had no way of knowing if it was from the intruders' work or the Galra's. It was a different kind of helplessness than merely being trapped in poor living conditions. This was worse, not knowing what was going on or what you could or should be doing, having to trust someone else—complete strangers—to ensure your survival.

Finally, they were flying steadily, without any sounds of fighting outside. The aliens who had broken into the prison removed their masks and finally introduced themselves.

"My name is Te-osh," the one who had led Matt out said.

"I'm Matt." It had been some time since he spoke his own name, though he reminded himself of it whenever he heard his prisoner number called.

As bags of water and food rations were passed around, the escapees started to ask the questions they had been saving. Matt directed his questions to Te-osh.

"Why did you take us?" It couldn't have been purely because it was a charitable thing to do. Even if their intentions were good, they couldn't break out every wrongly imprisoned inmate in the Galra Empire.

"You were going to be reassigned to a more specialized prison, which means you must have skills or knowledge that the Galra would have considered useful. So we're depriving them of whatever it is you might have given them."

Matt bristled at this, not liking the way they talked about them like they were commodities, or the assumption that he would have helped the enemy. "I wouldn't have given—"

"You never know until you're already under torture."

No, but he would have tried, for Shiro's sake, for Earth's sake. Matt let it go, though, supposing he should be grateful that he had been spared so far from finding out whether he had that degree of strength or courage.

"So … there are people working against the Galra? Like, an organized opposition? Or an insurrection?"

"Of course. You didn't think everyone under Galra rule supported them, did you?"

Matt shrugged. "I didn't know the Galra existed until I was captured. All I know about them is what I learned in prison."

Another rebel explained, "Zarkon has ruled for ten thousand years. In that time, he's never stopped expanding the Empire. There have always been small groups of people who tried to fight back, to defend their home planets or undermine his subjugation. Most of them didn't last long; they were either crushed completely, or gave up, or died out. We're just a cell, but there are other cells out there. We've only recently started to combine forces and work together."

Matt glanced around at the ragtag rebels and ragged prisoners. "So … what happens to us now?" Had the rebels rescued them with the intent of recruiting them? That debt could be used as leverage.

"We're going to stop at our base first. After that, you can stay and work with us, or we can drop you off someplace where you can find transportation to wherever you want to go. The only tricky thing will be staying below the radar."

Matt thought this over. He reasoned that he would have to stay with the rebels for a little while, because at present he did not know his way around the universe well enough to find his way home on his own. But even if he learned enough to be a competent intergalactic traveler, would it be safe for him, now that he was a fugitive? "I'm not really important to them. I don't think they'd bother searching for me."

"That may be, but you're in the Galra prison system's records, so if you bump into the wrong person, they can look you up and find out who you are."

The journey to the rebel base was shorter than Matt and his fellow escapees expected. Exiting the shuttle, stepping into the fresh air of an actual planet, impressed upon Matt the reality of his situation: for the first time in months, he was free.

He may not be able to go wherever he wanted, but he could obtain the means. He could choose his own path, pursue his own goals. Now that he was no longer confined to a cell or a schedule, he could begin to learn about the universe, going beyond Earth's limited knowledge.

The rebels had a supply of clothes for the newcomers to choose from. Matt had not had the luxury of choosing his own outfit for so long, the experience hit him with almost overwhelming emotions. Putting on new clothes almost felt like becoming a new person, a stranger with an uncertain future. He would have to discover who this person was.

After cleaning up, Matt approached Te-osh and her companions and told them his decision. "I can't go back home, at least not yet. I don't want to lead the Galra there, and my—my crewmates are still imprisoned somewhere, unless they found a way to escape. I need to find them. And I'd like to help you guys, too. Is there anything I can do?"

Te-osh smiled with surprising warmth. "You tell us. What are your skills?"

Matt was not sure where to begin. He had not undergone a job interview in years, and the last interview he could remember was when he was applying to the Galaxy Garrison. "Um … I was trained as a communications specialist. But I'm also a scientist. I worked in my home planet's military."

"What did you say was your home planet?"

"It's called Earth. At least, that's what we call it. I don't know what name it has out here."

Te-osh gestured for him to approach a screen and something that resembled a keyboard. "I assume you know the layout of celestial bodies in your galaxy?"

"Of course."

"You can input constellations and run a search for them."

The most basic constellation Matt could think of, the first once he had learned as a kid, was the Big Dipper. He dragged the stars in the approximate positions and entered the arrangement into the database's search engine. It yielded multiple results, but Matt was able to pick out the one he had grown up seeing in the night sky.

"This is it," he said, pulling up a holographic map. "This is our galaxy. We call it the Milky Way. And inside, our solar system. Nine planets surrounding a star, our sun. Earth is the third closest planet to the sun." Matt almost felt as though he were explaining it to a child, just as he had when Katie was little. He had wanted to be her teacher, and had been jealous when she caught up to him so quickly. Now he had far surpassed her in knowledge, at a more terrible cost than he could have imagined. He felt nostalgic as he zoomed in on a holographic image of Earth.

Te-osh came over to him and squeezed his shoulder. "I'm sure you'll return someday."

Matt did not tell her that he was not sure he wanted to go back until he found Shiro or Sam. Of course he still had his mother and sister to go home to, but he was not sure he could face them without bringing his father home, or the Garrison without their superstar pilot.

Te-osh kept an eye on Matt as much as she was able. It was nice, he reflected, to have someone do that for him again. It had been a while since he was with anyone who remotely cared about him, let alone bothered to take care of him. He did not know exactly how their ages compared, so he could not tell if her feelings and actions toward him were exactly motherly.

He wondered if this was what it felt like to have an older sibling. He was used to being the elder of a pair, showing the younger how to do the things he had done first. During the Kerberos mission, Shiro had been like a brother, but they were so close in age and had such different roles that Shiro's seniority did not influence their relationship much. The few times Matt had tried to treat him like the superior officer he technically was, Shiro had disarmed him with warmth and humor, and gently insisted on being treated like an equal, a friend. Of course, Matt still looked up to him as an example to follow. Matt wanted to emulate Shiro's bravery and selflessness, and working with the rebels gave him an opportunity to do so.

* * *

Music: "Give a Little More Than You Take" from _Joseph, King of Dreams_


	12. Blackbird

_Published January 15, 2017_

I have some unusual news: a short story I wrote was accepted for the Shallura (Shiro/Allura) fan magazine _Stars Aligned_! Search "shallurazine" on Tumblr to find purchasing information. Contributors receive a portion of the profits. As a bonus, if you order a physical copy before Season 2 comes out on Friday, you will also receive a free digital copy. Please spread this news to anyone who would be interested! You can also find _Stars Aligned_ on Twitter. Thanks!

"Blackbird"

* * *

Lift up your eyes on high  
And see who has created these stars,  
The One who leads forth their host by number,  
He calls them all by name;  
Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power,  
Not one of them is missing.  
~ Isaiah 40:26

* * *

Pidge had known that she had an ongoing problem with her teammates, which was negatively impacting their schoolwork; but she did not trouble herself about it too much, because she had more important problems to handle. She reminded herself that she was attending the Galaxy Garrison to save the people she already shared close relationships with, not to form new relationships with people she didn't know or care much about. Besides, the more time she spent with any individual, the more likely it was that she might give away her secret. No potential friendship was worth that risk.

She had not expected her neglect to come to a head on the night when she finally got some leads. Nor had she realized how obvious she had been about her sensitivity to the topic of the Kerberos mission.

When Lance and Hunk cornered her, she decided to tell them about her research, while censoring the details about her personal motives and illegal methods. There was no point in keeping her discoveries secret, when the world was about to change so drastically anyway. They would find out about the aliens eventually, one way or another. The least she could do was let them know they should be prepared.

As it turned out, there was no time to prepare in any way. As soon as she told them about the radio chatter, a lockdown was announced over the intercom—and then something entered the atmosphere, rapidly approaching Earth.

As soon as Pidge saw that it was a ship, she wondered if her father or brother could be on board. She gathered all her tech into her backpack and had it on her back before the ship crashed.

"We gotta see that ship!" She said "we" knowing it would be harder for Lance and Hunk to sneak back to their dorms than to sneak out of the base. It might be safer to have company anyway. There was no telling what they might find.

The desert was dark outside the Garrison's lights, but they could see and feel the ground well enough to follow the tracks of their teachers' vehicles to the site of the crash. At one point Hunk offered to carry Pidge's backpack, but she refused, and picked up her pace to show she could handle it.

As their antics that night got crazier, with the inclusion of abducting a pilot and accepting help from a drop-out, Pidge wasn't sure whether having other people involved in her search would be a blessing or a curse. Lance, Hunk, and especially Keith helped her get Shiro out of the Galaxy Garrison's hands, but she feared they would also be in the way.

Keith was a wild card for which Pidge was completely unprepared. His arrival seemed providential, as he was able to extract Shiro and provide them a getaway ride; but his driving was insane, and somehow impressed on them the insanity of what they were doing.

Under different circumstances, Pidge might have laughed at Garrison teachers crashing their vehicles into each other, proving once again their ineptness. But now she was too busy keeping her cursedly short arms around Shiro and her skinny legs around Keith's vehicle, trying not to lose her hold on either one. It was hard to say which was more precious right now, considering Shiro might be the key to finding her family.

Now that they were this deep in trouble, it was nice to have a place like Keith's cabin to rest and regroup. Keith brought Shiro into the tiny bedroom while the three classmates waited in what seemed to be a messy living room. When she peeked in on them, Pidge felt tempted to examine Shiro's strange mechanical arm. She was always fascinated by new technology, and this was the first piece of alien technology she had ever seen up close. But she did not want to stoop to the level of the Garrison medics who had ignored Shiro's words, strapped him down and knocked him out. He had obviously gone through a lot. The least they could do was respect his bodily autonomy. She went back to the living room to wait for him to wake up.

She tried dozing, knowing she would need top mental and physical energy to deal with whatever happened next, but the other two kept her awake with their chattering.

Lance's voice was thoughtful. "You know, I always wanted to meet Shiro, and I even sometimes thought about being the one to find him, but I never thought it would happen this way."

Pidge was pretty sure she _had_ met Shiro, at some point in her childhood, though she barely remembered it. "Why did you guys follow me, anyway?" she asked.

"It was Lance's idea," Hunk said, evidently trying to wash his hands of guilt.

"After what Iverson said, I thought we should do what I suggested at the start of the semester—you know, team bonding."

Pidge almost smiled. They had certainly done that, more in this one night than in the rest of the school term. "Well, I guess you succeeded, but it's not gonna make a difference to our education or careers."

"Why not?"

"Well, we can't really go back now."

"What do you mean?"

Pidge sighed at having to spell it out. "If we go back, we'll be expelled, and maybe arrested. Aside from breaking curfew, ignoring the lockdown, and leaving the school grounds without permission, we took Shiro from their custody—I don't know if they'd consider that kidnapping or theft, but it was definitely illegal—and we engaged them in a vehicular chase that resulted in several of our teachers crashing. They could probably sue us for damages and injuries." Pidge herself would face even greater ramifications: the Garrison would probably find out her secret, and she would face charges of fraud.

As he heard to this list of charges, Lance's frown became deeper and his eyes became wider. Pidge could not tell if he was genuinely surprised or merely calculating.

Hunk was agitated as usual, and even slightly outraged at this point. "See, this is why I didn't want any part of this! We might be forfeiting everything we've worked for, over something that never involved us in the first place!"

"You could have stayed behind," Lance pointed out.

"So why did you guys come?" Pidge asked.

"This is way more exciting and important than anything the Garrison would let us do," Lance answered.

"I just didn't want to be alone when aliens had just landed," Hunk confessed. "That's scary stuff. When the Garrison trucks went out, it was like a war zone.

"They haven't actually caught us, though," Lance said finally.

"By now they've probably checked all the dorms in the Garrison. They know we're not there."

"Yeah, but we may not have been the only ones trying to go out on the town," Lance said slyly. "We can talk our way through it."

Pidge gave him a dubious look. She had done a lot of tricky maneuvering to get around the Garrison's security, but their actions tonight had been so bold, she knew it was the end of one journey and the beginning of another.

"Well, if we can't graduate together, at least we can flunk out together," Hunk remarked. It was difficult to tell if he was being cynical or optimistic.

At least they did not blame Pidge for leading them into this mess. She only hoped they would feel the same way when they finally faced the consequences of their actions.

* * *

Music: "Blackbird" by The Beatles


	13. The Final Countdown

_Published February 1, 2017_

"The Final Countdown"

* * *

Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." ~ Matthew 9:37-38

* * *

When Keith showed his research to his new fellow fugitives, Pidge knew she should be glad to have all this new information, but instead of thankfulness, she felt somehow … wistful. Both she and Keith had spent months struggling with their own observation, investigation, and analysis. If they had known about each other, about their connections to the Kerberos crew (apparently Keith was Shiro's good friend), they could have worked together. They might have been less lonely, and maybe they might have made further progress than either of them had made on their own.

When they made their proper introductions, Pidge thought Shiro might mistake her for Matt, or suspect that she was some relative of the Holts. But he did not comment on their resemblance. Maybe Matt had looked different when Shiro last saw him. Or maybe he had not seen Matt for a while and could not remember how he looked.

Shiro's sudden return gave her hope, but also made her wary. His connection to her father and brother made her want to be closer to him, but his claim of amnesia made her hesitant to trust him. His reputation was honorable and full of accolades, but anything could have happened in the year he had been missing.

Pidge saw four logical possibilities: Shiro did remember, and was deliberately lying; his experience had been so traumatic that he had unconsciously blocked it from his memory; the aliens had tampered with his memory in order to prevent him from revealing information about them; or the Garrison's sedative had affected his memory. His ostensible amnesia might even have resulted from a combination of these factors, or from an entirely unknown variable.

There was also the question of how Shiro had managed to crash his stolen alien ship in the vicinity of the Garrison, which happened to be in the vicinity of the energy field and lion carvings Keith described. Shiro himself did not know whether he had piloted the alien ship or if someone had programmed it to go to that particular destination. If it was the latter, was it because of the proximity to the Garrison, or to the carvings?

It was altogether too convenient that the three locations were near each other, too convenient to be mere coincidence. Pidge did not like to think of God or destiny, forces whose existence or action could not be supported by science. There had to be some connections between the places, some rational explanation for why they were so close. It seemed unlikely that such a strange geological site could have been undiscovered, especially with the military stationed so close. Was the Garrison built where it was _because_ it was close to the carvings? Pidge made a mental note to find out whether the Garrison personnel knew about the strange place.

For now, the fugitives had to worry about the points Shiro _was_ able to remember: aliens were coming to Earth in search of a superweapon, which was probably in their general area. The Garrison could not be counted on to find it or fend off the aliens, so the five of them would have to try to do so.

Pidge could not believe that Hunk had gone through her belongings, after she told him (three times!) not to touch them. When he showed them the one photograph she had brought with her, the one of her and Matt on the day of the Kerberos launch, she thought her secret was out; but he announced that Pidge was the boy in the photo and the girl was a girlfriend. Did Hunk really believe that, or had he figured out the truth and decided to cover for her? She did not have time to dwell on it, as he moved on to the topic of her research and how he could use it. Once again, she realized she could have gotten much farther much sooner if she had shared her work and collaborated with other people.

"Why are you suddenly helping?" Pidge asked him as he built his Voltron element detector. "I thought you didn't want to be involved in all this."

"For one thing, I'm already involved. For another, that was before I knew aliens were coming here."

Pidge shrugged it off and focused on helping him make the tracking device. She had always understood technology more easily than people. Machinery worked in patterns that could be altered to suit one's needs, whereas people were unpredictable and uncontrollable.

At least, that was her outlook until they discovered the blue lion. It had a mind of its own, behaving in ways that science alone could not explain.

Of course it would be impulsive, touch-sensitive Lance who found the Voltron lion and got it up and running: he was the only one who dared to touch the carvings, and then the forcefield, and he was the first to dare to step into the lion's open mouth, sitting at the pilot's seat.

Through her awe, fear, and excitement, Pidge felt kind of jealous of Lance's intuitive command of the alien technology. She would have loved to have a lion of her own.

Lance may have seen this experimental joyride as an opportunity to get back at Keith for driving his vehicle so recklessly with them as passengers. But considering how impulsive and inconsiderate he was in the simulator, it was most likely his actual flying style.

In light of the metaphorical and literal strides the five of them had made, they probably should not have been entirely surprised to find themselves leaving Earth and entering outer space. Pidge wondered if this was the opportunity she had hoped to someday act upon, to go out and find her father and brother. She had thought it would take years to reach that point. Its early arrival caught her off guard, but after so many months of such slow progress, she could not complain that it had come too soon.

However, fighting an alien battleship was not something any of them had expected or agreed upon. In the part of her brain that was not caught up in the immediate chaos, Pidge wondered if saving Earth from the battleship would be enough to exonerate them.

The moment when the wormhole appeared was the first time Pidge saw Lance defer to another person's leadership. Shiro, in turn, deferred to the group. "We're a team now. We should decide together."

It seemed a strange thing to say. With the exceptions of some pairs of friends—Shiro and Keith, Lance and Hunk—the five of them barely knew each other. But they were all caught in this situation, each of them experiencing varying levels of reluctance, resignation, and willingness.

Pidge thought fleetingly of her mother, who by now had probably been informed of her disappearance from the Garrison. If Pidge left Earth, she might not be able to see her mother for an even longer time than they had anticipated. But Pidge was now farther from Earth and closer to her missing relatives than she had ever been, and it would be counterproductive to turn back now. Her mother would understand that. So Pidge met the others' gazes steadily, and squeezed Lance's shoulder in support of the motion.

"Okay … guess we're all ditching class tomorrow," Lance said sardonically, as though their lives as ordinary students had not already ended. Going through the wormhole just sealed the decisions and changes that led up to that moment. They were no longer investigating, but barreling into the unknown, with only each other and the alien lion-ship to rely on. They all had to take a leap of faith, both figuratively as they trusted each other, and literally as they trusted the blue lion.

* * *

Music: "The Final Countdown" by Europe


	14. Drive It Like You Stole It

_Published February 10, 2017_

"Drive It Like You Stole It"

* * *

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound. ~ Isaiah 61:1

* * *

Shiro urged everyone to be cautious as they disembarked on the unknown planet. When Pidge asked what he was thinking, he acknowledged that his previous crew had been captured by aliens, and vowed not to let the same thing happen again. He really did seem to care about Sam and Matt. Pidge remembered that they had been friends with him long before the Kerberos mission. Assuming that he was still the good and trustworthy person he was before the mission, he must miss them. She wondered if he felt at all guilty for losing them, and whether such a feeling was justified.

The Blue Lion indicated, through its monitors and through its telepathic communication with Lance, that they would be able to breathe on this planet. The gravity was also similar to Earth's, suggesting it had the same density if not the same size. It was an incredible feeling, to know they were the first humans to see this place. Perhaps this was how explorers of past ages had felt when they came upon unfamiliar territory. The castle was a clear indication that intelligent beings lived here, or had lived here at one time, but no one from Earth had ever set foot on it before them.

The identity scan they triggered in the castle foyer startled and confused them. It could not possibly recognize them, yet it granted them entry, as though it had reason to trust them. Perhaps the scan was intended not to control but merely to record who entered the castle.

The fact that the two parties could understand each other was astonishing, when they stopped to think about it in the midst of all the other astonishing discoveries. Perhaps these aliens (or were the Earthlings the aliens in this situation?) had some kind of telepathic communication that allowed them to perceive their meaning. Pidge thought fleetingly of Pentecost, one of the few Bible stories that had stuck with her from conversations with her family, but she doubted the Holy Spirit was behind this communication.

Hearing Allura and Coran's story evoked a mixture of empathy and fear from Pidge. She understood the pain of losing one's family, and yet feared that her own loss might someday match Allura's. There was a very real chance that Sam Holt was dead or would die before Pidge reached him; and there was a definite possibility that this Galra Empire that Shiro and the Alteans spoke of with such fear might someday invade Earth, as had almost happened a short while before.

Allura called the pilots of the mechanical lions "paladins," a term Pidge knew mainly from playing video games set in medieval-style worlds. She understood it to mean a kind of knight or warrior, usually belonging to some official order.

She was thrilled by the possibility of finding her own lion, a technology with a personality that complemented hers. What she had sometimes thought might be arrogance and recklessness, Allura called intellect and daring. Her father had said that he expected her to be part of something great. Maybe this was it.

The planet where Allura and Coran sent them to look for the green lion was covered with vegetation. Normally such an environment would irritate Pidge, but after being in the barren desert for so long, the sight of the river, plants, and cute little alien creatures was surprisingly welcome. Pidge could tell Shiro enjoyed these sights too, and no wonder, if he had been imprisoned for the past year.

Pidge did not mean to open up to Shiro as they went down the river. She was really just venting, talking through her thoughts the way she used to with her family members. She felt embarrassed and disheartened when Shiro laughed. But hearing him quote her father encouraged her and made her more willing to trust both Shiro and herself. Looking back on the past day or so, she realized that if she had stopped along the way to worry about what could do wrong, she would not have traveled this far.

Hearing Shiro tell her, a moment later, "Go. Be great," gave her a surge of joy. When she had decided to go to the Galaxy Garrison, her mother had been accepting and reasonably encouraging, but it had been obvious that she was afraid, reluctant, and just barely holding on to hope. Shiro, on the other hand, seemed to believe she was up to the task. It was almost like hearing her father give his blessing on her endeavors.

Finding the green lion was like finding the ultimate birthday present. It was full of alien (in both senses of the word) mechanisms that promised hours of examination and experimentation, the kind of hands-on work Pidge had missed while staying at the Garrison.

It was almost as if the universe were trying to make up for what it had taken from her, or give her a way to recover what she had lost.

Her exhilaration wore off when they regrouped at the castle and found that the fight they were preparing themselves for was coming much sooner than they had anticipated. She got her first glimpse of a Galra alien when Commander Sendak contacted Princess Allura, and now the newly-formed team faced their first big decision since leaving Earth. Part of Pidge wanted to leave, ensuring everyone's freedom, so she could continue tracking Sam and Matt; but that would not be fair to Arus's inhabitants, when Sendak had threatened to destroy the planet. Unless they took action to stop Zarkon's forces, the Galra would continue taking prisoners just like Shiro, Sam, and Matt. So Pidge voted to stay.

With the four other paladins divided, Shiro deferred to Allura for a decision. She spent about ten minutes in what Coran said was an artificial intelligence chamber, which apparently stored her dead father's memories. When she emerge, she had changed out of her regal gown into a combat jumpsuit, and told them it was time to fight, that they were destined for this role, that they were the universe's only hope. It was all bigger than any of them could really comprehend, but Shiro echoed Allura's commitment and determination, and the younger Earthlings had enough faith in him to follow.

Receiving their suits of armor fostered a more positive kind of excitement. Pidge knew from experience how changing clothes could influence one's attitude and sense of self. Each suit altered itself to fit the paladin that donned it. The result was that they all became more confident.

The bayards Allura gave them were another technological mystery. Clothing that stretched or shrank to fit its wearer was one thing, but the Earthlings found it difficult wrap their minds around the idea of a weapon whose very form was undetermined until its owner received it. Pidge found her own bayard very satisfying. Like her, it was small, sharp, versatile, and full of surprises. Anyone who underestimated her or her bayard was bound to regret it.

When Shiro recognized the ship as the one in which he had been imprisoned, everything about the situation shifted in Pidge's eyes. Her father and brother might now be within walking distance. She tried to hide her urgency, to seem like basic compassion made her want to look for other prisoners, but Shiro insisted they had to focus on their mission to find Keith's lion, for the greater good in this war they had entered.

At that point, Pidge put her foot down. She had to make them understand what was really driving her. So she told them who the Holts were to her, and made it absolutely clear that she would not stop searching now that she was this close, even if doing so required going against orders.

She thought that Shiro would figure out her true identity then. Though he might not remember her from the few times they had met when she was little, he must know that the Holts had only two children, one boy and one girl. But Shiro did not ask for clarification on this point, so Pidge assumed he had forgotten. It didn't matter now anyway. Knowing that his friends were her family was enough to convince Shiro to help her look for them.

As it turned out, all she gained from this detour was a reprogrammed Galra droid, which was nice to have, but a far cry from what she had hoped to find. They were, however, able to free several aliens being held captive, and directed them to an escape pod. Then Pidge came face-to-face with Galra sentries for the first time.

Pidge regretted not having examined Shiro's arm, when it seemed to move of its own accord as they tried to escape; but then Shiro seemed to gain control of it, and turned it on their attackers. Pidge was thoroughly impressed by his ability to fend off the guards. Though Shiro was mystified and clueless as to how he had learned to fight so well, Pidge decided it did not matter, so long as he used his abilities to help their team.

When Sendak's ship locked its tractor beam on the five lions, it occurred to Pidge that this might be the way she reunited with her family, by becoming a prisoner herself. But then her freedom would be so severely limited that she would have to count on luck or providence to bring her to wherever they were. And even if she found them, returning to Earth, to her mother, would be much more difficult.

But as she and the others slid into despair, Shiro, the one who had arguably suffered more than the rest of them combined, showed a sudden burst of determination. Perhaps he could not stand the idea of returning to Galra custody, but he did not bother pressing how unbearable that would be for them. Instead he reminded them that on top of their personal motives for fighting the Galra, they and their lions were the universe's only hope, which meant they could not afford to fail. His conviction was contagious, and the four younger paladins chorused their agreement.

What happened next was beyond anything any of them had ever experienced. It was almost as if every small instance of teamwork and camaraderie between any of the five paladins combined and intensified. The five minds and five vehicles all clicked and connected. Each of them was still the same size, but now they were part of something _huge_.

Voltron.

Pidge perceived her lion's place on the upper left side, as an arm. She could feel Shiro guiding as the head and Hunk supporting her as a leg. Keith's lion was opposite her as the right arm, the most agile part of the robot's body. Lance's lion was the leg underneath him. All these observations took a matter of seconds to process, but the strangest thing about them was how much each component and relationship made sense.

The closest comparison Pidge could draw to her emotions after the battle was the way she felt after being accepted to the Galaxy Garrison: she knew she ought to be happy and proud, but the work that lay ahead weighed down her sense of accomplishment.

Shiro noticed, and took a moment to reassure her that she need not give up her search. He even implied that they would help her. "Wherever they are, I know they're proud of you," he told her. Pidge smiled at him, still sad, but appreciative of his support. She was glad to have him around. He was no substitute for her father or her brother, but he was something like a representative for them, since he knew them so well.

The goal Allura and Coran proposed, and assumed they were already committed to pursuing, seemed even more intimidating than the one Pidge had set for herself. While she and the three younger paladins were dismayed by their words, Shiro accepted the challenge cheerfully. They shared his sense of pride and purpose, but there were still plenty of doubts in their minds.

Coran showed each of them a bedroom where they could stay in the castle, but instead of going to bed, Pidge took her computer and Rover to the infirmary, where the prisoners they had freed were now recuperating in healing pods. Finally alone, Pidge thought over what had happened since she left Earth. They had lost all sense of time, since days on Earth were based on the planet's rotation, but Pidge supposed it had been more than twenty-four Earth hours to their bodies. Unless even more bizarre events took place in the future, they would probably never experience so much in such a short amount of time.

All of the paladins and Alteans saw this team as a means to an end, but Pidge's goal was far more specific and probably shorter-term than their broad goal of defeating Zarkon and liberating the universe from the Galra Empire. She worried that helping this cause would distract and prevent her from searching for her family. But on the other hand, staying at the Castle of Lions and fighting the Galra would probably provide the most and best opportunities to find them.

She would stay with them and help them advance toward this goal, as long as doing so brought her closer to her own goal. But she would not stay longer than necessary.

On a whim, Pidge tried sending a message to her mother from her computer, but as she had expected, the distance between Arus and Earth was too great for the electronic signal to travel. So she had no way of telling her mother where she was or what she was doing. Hopefully, though, the Galaxy Garrison would leak enough information for her to piece together who she was with.

What would her family think of her when they learned what she had been up to, or if they saw her in battle? Would they be impressed by her new skills and technology, or appalled to see her engaging in violence?

She knew one thing for sure: if they ever returned to Earth with their lions, and told people what they had done to defend the universe, Iverson would go berserk when he learned what his deplorably incompetent former cadets had accomplished. That brought a satisfied smile to Pidge's face.

* * *

Music: "Drive It Like You Stole It" from _Sing Street_


	15. Bring Him Home

_Published May 14, 2017. Happy Mother's Day!_

I dedicate this chapter to my mother, who, like Colleen, supports her children's goals, even when they entail periods of separation.

"Bring Him Home"

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. ~ 3 John 1:4

* * *

There was only one twenty-four-hour period in which Katie sent multiple messages to Colleen. It was also the last day Colleen received any communication from her for a long time.

 _I was right about something big happening. Will fill you in later._

The update came barely two hours later: _My crew and I found the pilot._ There was no need to specify whose pilot, of what crew or mission. Colleen understood well enough. It was just hard to believe. She was afraid to believe it, afraid to hope or even speculate what it might mean. It was greater than any lead they had hoped for. Shiro must know what happened to Sam and Matt, and how to find them. If he had survived and returned, surely they could too!

Colleen's hopes deflated somewhat with a subsequent message as a new day began: _He doesn't remember much, but since he survived, I think his crew probably did too._

Katie's final communication was series of clipped phrases, as though she were in a hurry: _Investigating clues. Might not be able to send messages for a while. Don't worry. I'm with friends._

Between and after these messages, Colleen spent hours watching the television and checking other media outlets, watching reports of what she knew must have been the "big event" Katie had expected. Even the Galaxy Garrison could not hide the arrival and departure of unauthorized spacecraft. Various satellites and observatories, as well as some laypeople, had observed a ship, unlike those produced by any space exploration program on Earth, entering Earth's atmosphere and landing in a location estimated to be quite close to the Galaxy Garrison. Less than a day later, a machine unlike any ever known or imagined was seen flying around the desert and then launching into space: a giant blue and gray vehicle shaped like a lion. They released photos and short videos through social media before the authorities could confiscate the evidence and force them into silence on the subject.

It was crazy. Completely crazy. Both Colleen and Pidge, and perhaps a few conspiracy theorists, had speculated that aliens might have had something to do with the Kerberos crew's disappearance, but Colleen had never seriously suspected it. Yet it seemed the only possible explanation.

In addition to interviewing people who claimed to have seen the unidentified flying objects, the news media reported the disappearance of the three Garrison cadets, apparently in the hope that viewers would be able to find and identify them. There was one piece of good news: Pidge's simulation crewmates had gone missing the same night, so they were probably together. Perhaps they were the friends to whom Pidge had referred. Colleen found some consolation in knowing that her daughter was not alone.

She tired not to worry when she received official notification of Pidge Gunderson's disappearance, through the separate address she had set up—a fake parent for a fake student. But then, for once, they gave her more information than the media: they charged Pidge Gunderson, along with his teammates, with conspiracy and treason, and said that anyone who helped them would be arrested. They refused to give details, but it was clear that the truants had broken several laws.

Hearing the official stories on the one hand and the alternate-news leaks and theories on the other, Colleen did not know what to believe, or whether to be afraid or hopeful. Pidge had sounded hopeful, but there was so much she did not explain, and the one fact she cryptically passed on was so unexpected, so improbable, it opened up a new world of uncertainty. The lack of knowledge was almost more frightening than being informed of actual danger or tragedy.

The following period was like a less intense repetition of the Kerberos crew's disappearance. Colleen contacted everyone she could think of that might have access to information. The Shiroganes were as clueless as she. The families of the other missing Garrison students were distraught—they were going through the same frustration and grief Colleen and Katie had experienced. Colleen appealed to old acquaintances, even offered bribes—she figured her family would forgive her if she bartered some of their savings or scientific equipment for information about them. But everyone was either unable or unwilling to tell her anything. No one in the Galaxy Garrison would speak to her, either as Mrs. Holt or as Mrs. Gunderson.

Colleen waited until she had exhausted all other methods of investigation before she took a leaf out of her daughter's book: she snuck into the Garrison and hacked into their classified files.

There were photographs that had been hidden from the media and the general public, documenting the site of the first unauthorized space vehicle's landing. Those were tempting, but Colleen knew she had limited time, so she focused on finding out what had happened to the students who went missing. There was ample security footage from that night. Of course Pidge had been careful to avoid being caught on the cameras—she was quite clever to replace the live feeds with recorded footage at times when she snuck around the campus—but there were still recordings of other areas.

The most surprising and delightful discovery was of security footage from a place outside the Garrison proper: apparently the officers had set up a temporary medical station in the location where the first unauthorized space vehicle had landed. The footage showed medical technicians in hazardous materials suits, and one person, apparently the vehicle's passenger. Colleen gasped when she recognized Shiro. He looked somewhat different from the confident pilot she had met, yet there was no mistaking him, and sure enough, the med-techs addressed him by his famous nickname. Pidge's message had been truthful and accurate. Here was legitimate reason for hope!

Colleen's euphoria vanished when she heard Shiro's desperate protests as they tried to run tests on him. Maybe the med-techs thought he was insane, crying out about aliens who destroyed worlds and were now coming to Earth. Colleen did not want to believe that he was crazy, but she wanted even less to believe that what he was saying was true. She understood the necessity of the tests—that cyborg prosthetic was frightening, and if he had been out in space, in environments unknown to humans, he could have contaminants that might harm people. Nevertheless, she grew angry as she saw how the medics had treated Shiro, ignoring his urgent cries, even administering a sedative against his will. They were treating him like all the other evidence of alien activity, from Kerberos to Earth: they meant to keep it quiet and hidden.

Colleen wanted to cheer when the footage showed a new person, who drove a hoverbike up to the makeshift facility, entered, and swiftly knocked out each medic. She did not know who he was, but two things were clear: he was no ally of the Garrison, and he was far superior to them in combat.

Just as the newcomer cut Shiro free, another young man—no, they were both teenagers—came in protesting that _he_ would be the one to save Shiro. Colleen recognized him as Lance McClain, one of the other students who disappeared that night. From their confusing conversation, Colleen gathered that the stranger's name was Keith and that the two youths knew each other but were not close.

The tapes from the cameras set up outside the station showed two more people approaching: Hunk Garrett—and Pidge! The four teenagers clambered onto Keith's vehicle and took Shiro with them. It did not look at all safe for so many passengers, but they sped off as the Garrison vehicles came back. Colleen could not see the resulting chase, but from the timing and content of Pidge's messages, she knew Pidge, Shiro, and at least one other person had survived this escape.

Many people had surmised that whoever arrived in the first ostensibly alien spacecraft had left in the second. If that was true, and Pidge was still with Shiro … had she—would she have—left Earth to search for Sam and Matt? Collen knew the answer, though she did not want to admit its possibility. Katie had been so determined to find them that she had been willing to hide her true self and take all the risks that fraud entailed. If self-expression, freedom, and an honorable reputation were now enough to hold her back, safety and a sense of home certainly would not.

Before leaving the offices, Colleen searched the name "Keith" and the word "pilot" in the database. There were a few people of that name, but only one was of the right age, appearance, and class to be the one on this tape. Colleen skimmed his records, found that he was a prodigious pilot, but had been expelled due to disciplinary issues.

As she returned home, Colleen pondered what she had learned and what she could do now, armed with her new data, hypotheses, and theories.

She did not want to wait. More than anything, she wanted to look for her family. But she had no way of getting into space. She could not steal a ship—people had attempted to do so in the past, and none had succeeded. (At least, it was only the failed attempts that were publicized; perhaps there had been some successful ones that were simply hushed up.) Besides, what if she left, and her family returned home before she did? It would be like Pinocchio returning to his father's house and finding out Gepetto had gotten lost while looking for him. That sealed Colleen's decision. She had to make sure they had a home and a family to return to.

In the meantime, she reached out to the Shiroganes, McClains, and Garretts again. She told them that she had some new intelligence, enough to both reassure and terrify them, and asked whether they wanted to know it. Of course they did: so she told them about Shiro and his incredible claims, and the subsequent chase, which might have been considered either a kidnapping or a rescue. Colleen could not tell whether or not they took Shiro's words seriously. They thanked her for thinking of them, though, and said they were relieved beyond what words could express, to know that their sons were alive and accompanied by friends.

Colleen read Pidge's messages over and over again, trying to reassure herself. She tried hard to follow Pidge's one instruction, _Don't worry_.

She tried not to worry as weeks went by without any communication from Pidge or news from the scientific community. She told herself that this was a different kind of disappearance than that of Sam and Matt. Pidge had left with a mission, a goal accompanied by a substantial lead. No news was truly good news.

Colleen remembered something Matt had said once, a joke about Katie being a communications officer, acting like a homing pigeon, to pun her nickname. The analogy was not quite right, because pigeons could not travel back and forth between correspondents. They did, however, have a unique ability to find their way back to their home, and to find their mates despite separation over a great distance.

Eventually, Colleen gave up trying not to worry. It was inevitable. But she found that she could live with the anxiety, because in spite of it, she had hope.

No matter how great the odds, Colleen had to trust that Pidge could find her family and a way home.

* * *

Music: "Bring Him Home" from _Les Mis_ _é_ _rables_ , music by Claude-Michel Schönberg, English lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer


	16. He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother

_Published February 20, 2017_

"He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother"

* * *

There is no reason to sacrifice truth for unity or unity for truth. We can have them both, but it requires love and humility. ~ Marcel Lejeune

* * *

Now that it seemed they were going to work as a team for a while, Pidge considered telling the others about her true identity. It was no longer a secret that she was related to the Holts, but she had left out the fact that she was a girl.

Technically, she had never lied to them about her sexual identity; she had simply not corrected them when they perceived it incorrectly. She saved that nuance as ammunition for if they ever got mad at her about it.

Pidge decided against telling them because it was now imperative that they be able to work together, and she did not want them to think of her any differently because she was a girl. It was challenging enough for her to be the smallest and youngest person on the team. The last thing she needed was to give them another reason to think of her as different or more vulnerable.

The hardest test was during the meditation session Coran directed. Would she give herself away? _Should_ she? No, surely not now: the shock would ruin their concentration during the exercise, and the boys' awareness that she was different from them might make it even harder for them to bond. After all, what boy would want to allow a girl access to his thoughts?

Ironically, Pidge thought the person she might have the most in common with was Keith. Like her, he had lost his family and was used to operating alone. But that meant neither of them was really inclined to reach out to each other.

The first time the two of them truly bonded was when they were handcuffed together and had to cooperate in order to throw food at Allura. After all the quiznak the princess had put them through, combining their strength for that action was immensely satisfying.

Pidge wished Matt could have been part of that food fight. It would have been fun to throw food at him, but it also would have been good to have him on her team. The food fight was the first real fun she had experienced since learning of his disappearance.

She felt guilty and wistful when Hunk talked about them having no secrets, called them brothers, and professed his love for them. She had a secret, and a blood brother, and she did not love these paladins in the same way, or to the same degree, as she loved him.

She formed much simpler relationships with the team members that were even smaller than her: Rover and the Altean mice. They reminded Pidge of Bae-Bae. She had missed the dog's quiet companionship while staying at the Galaxy Garrison. Even though Rover could not perceive or respond to human feelings, its constant presence was reassuring. It was also helpful, sparing Pidge from having to ask other people for assistance when she could not reach things. The mice were closer to Allura than to anyone else, but they also liked Pidge, who found them fun to play with, and much nicer to touch than Rover.

Her suspicions of Shiro returned when the freed Galra prisoners revealed how he and Matt were separated. Then he disappointed her personally by pulling her out of the crashed ship before they had finished downloading its prison records. She was about to pull out her bayard to get him off her, when the massive Galra pod crashed where they would have been. He had saved her life, so she forgave him, at least for that second betrayal. But she could not find it in her heart to forgive him for hurting Matt for no reason.

After they defeated the monster, Pidge asked the freed prisoners to keep their eyes open for Sam and Matt, and to find a way to alert her of their location if they ever met again. After that, she was not in the mood to socialize with the other paladins, so she went outside with the mice to watch the Arusian sunset.

She had not been out long before Shiro found her. When he relayed what he now remembered of the last time he saw Matt, gratitude for his selflessness and shame for her mistrust moved Pidge to tears. It had been a while since she had cried by herself, let alone in anyone's company. But that vulnerability seemed utterly insignificant to how vulnerable Shiro had made himself to save Matt. She hugged him without thinking twice about it, babbling her apology and thanks.

She was shocked when Shiro called her by her real name. He knew the truth. He must have figured it out a while ago. Yet he had not treated her any differently when he had that knowledge. He even kept the secret, respecting her right to decide whether or not to tell anyone.

It felt weird to have someone else know. It was risky having to trust someone other than herself. But it was also strangely nice. Pidge no longer felt alone, now that the burden was shared. It did not weigh on Shiro nearly as much, but he was aware that it weighed on her.

She finally got to look closely at his arm when they downloaded the information from the crashed Galra ship. While their friends planned a party with the Arusians, they set up a makeshift laboratory in the Green Lion's hangar. Shiro rested his prosthetic on a table under a bright light while Pidge examined it and transferred the data. It was not as much as she had hoped to obtain, but it was a start.

"I'm sorry we didn't get everything," Shiro said.

Pidge saw through his thinly veiled words. "But you're not sorry for pulling me away."

He smiled briefly at her shrewdness, but his eyes were still somber. "No. I lost two Holts, and that was when I couldn't control what was happening. I couldn't risk losing you, too, when I was able to avoid it."

She bit her lip, wanting to tell him off for thinking he had to protect her, but at the same time understanding how that made sense. "Do you blame yourself at all? For what happened on Kerberos and afterwards?"

His eyes traveled from his hand to her face, and then back to his hand. "I don't know. Sometimes."

"Well, I don't," she informed him. "And neither does my mom. I want you to know that."

She did not ask Shiro what else he now remembered about being a gladiator. She could guess, though now she had enough faith in him to give him credit. He had probably been forced to do other bad things, or things that seemed bad, but she did not think less of him for it.

Pidge wondered if Matt faced situations like that, too.

When she talked to Shiro and the Alteans about the Galra, she gathered that only the strong survived in their society. That worried her somewhat, because strength was not a quality she normally associated with her father and brother. They were physically fit enough to be astronauts, but they were mainly intellectuals. Heck, she could sometimes beat Matt at arm-wrestling. She could not guess how well or poorly they had fared, or were faring now, in the Galra work camp, or wherever they were now.

Her father and brother would have to be strong in order to survive. And she would have to be strong in order to find them, even strong enough to leave her new friends.

Pidge decided she would try to determine the speed at which the Galra had expanded their empire, and estimate, if possible, how long it would take to liberate the same area. She examined the numbers that Allura and Coran were able to obtain from the castle's computers, keeping that the expansion might continue in some places even as they liberated others.

She came to only one definite conclusion: it would take too long to keep her family waiting. It might take longer than her lifetime. It would make sense to find her family first, and help Team Voltron later. But she did not want them to count on her returning, because she could not be certain that she would.

After decoding the data from Shiro's arm, Pidge thought about simply taking the Green Lion to begin her search at Sam and Matt's last known location. After all, it belonged to her, in that mystical way Allura had described. But it seemed wrong to take it away from the set. If she left it, they could find someone to replace her as its pilot.

Pidge knew her family might be disappointed that she had not done more to fight the Galra, but even if they were noble enough to prolong their own suffering, they would probably agree that returning to Colleen was a priority. She did not deserve to be left waiting for so long.

When Pidge told the others that she was leaving, Keith's fury and choice of words bewildered her. _He_ didn't have a family. Perhaps that was the point, that he did not want other people in the universe to lose their lives the way his parents had, or lose their families the way he had. But then, he should have understood what Pidge herself was going through, and how important it was for her to find and save her family.

She appreciated Shiro's defense of her. In fact, Shiro was the biggest cause of any reluctance she felt. He understood her more than anyone else on the team, perhaps better than anyone besides her immediate family members at this point in her life. Yet having his permission to leave was like having her mother's blessing: she had to leave behind the loved ones she was with in order to find the ones she had lost.

Yet when the castle was attacked, just as she was about to depart, she had to go back and see if they were all right.

They were not.

As always, she was quick to reassess and alter her priorities. Lance's life and health were in immediate jeopardy, so Pidge let go of her goal for the present, and offered her pod as a vehicle to find and transport a new crystal. It was not until after they accepted her offer that she thought pragmatically about how she would probably be able to take it or another pod after they came back.

All her thoughts regarding that vanished when she saw Sendak and Haxus capture Shiro and the unconscious Lance.

She was relieved that she could still communicate with Allura and Keith through her comm unit, but the tasks they gave her were, to say the least, intimidating. She was not used to having people count on her. Well, perhaps that was not true: Lance and Hunk had counted on her to be their communications officer during their training, but she had never really come through for them in that role. **  
**

Rover was the only witness of her vow to help her team. She would save them and make up for all the times she had let them down in the past.

When she left her hiding place to face Haxus, she finally owned up to the title and role that Allura had given her. "I'm a paladin of Voltron!"

Pidge did not want to kill an intelligent sentient being, but since Haxus made it clear that he would fight until either victory or death, she understood that it might be necessary to save herself and her friends.

She thought fleetingly of David and Goliath, in the first book that bore her father's name. It seemed a good time to believe that story was true.

She did not realize how attached she had become to Rover, or how complex it was, until she saw Haxus pull Rover down with him. Rover was strong enough to carry a person; it had carried her weight just moments ago. Haxus was bigger than her, but he still had one foot on the edge, so Rover was not holding his entire weight.

Rover somehow made a conscious choice to power down. Pidge was stunned, and wondered whether it had done that out of loyalty to her or some kind of inherent programming meant to emulate the Galra creed, "victory or death". Either way, since she had reprogrammed Rover to help her, Haxus's death was her fault.

Pidge wondered what her family would think of her, now that she had killed a Galra. Her mother would be horrified, might pity her, think her a stranger or a monster. Her father and brother might be sympathetic, since they had suffered so much in the hands of the Galra Empire. They might even be glad about it, proud of her for besting a soldier.

The loss of Rover and the realization that she had ended an intelligent being's life hardened her somewhat, prompted her to shout defiantly into Sendak's communication channel. She _meant_ what she said when she told him he was next: if she could defeat one Galra, she could do it again.

The sound of Shiro's feeble, frustrated voice made her freeze, remembering the other lives at stake. When he heard her say his name, his tone became desperate; then his warning was cut off by sounds of electrical sizzling and Shiro's incoherent exclamations of agony.

Pidge found she could not bear the possibility of Shiro in pain or dying any more than she could bear her father or brother in such a situation. That was when she realized the people she had been living with lately were more than just allies or friends: they had become like family, just as her father said always happened to him and his crewmembers.

She would not give in to Sendak's demands, but she would not let her friends suffer because of her either.

As she approached her friends and her enemy, she heard Sendak gloating and musing about the possibility of invading Earth. Pidge thought of her mother and all that she and the paladins loved on their home planet, and her determination redoubled. There was no way she would let the Galra get there.

At the moment when it mattered most, every member of the team that was present on Arus came through to help each other. They had come a long way from failing to protect each other in the training room simulation. This time they had each other's backs, and they managed to defeat Sendak by working together.

Allura, Shiro, and Keith recognized that they were indebted to Pidge, after everything she had done to save them. Shiro went so far as to say it seemed like she was meant to be part of their team, implying that he believed what Allura had professed about all of them being bonded by destiny.

Pidge was not sure she believed in destiny, but she did believe in her friends, and their cause, and the bonds they had formed with each other. She was not ready to call them brothers, as Hunk had, but she did love them, as if they were an extended family. She could see, too, that fighting the Galra was the best way to protect Earth and all those who were threatened by the regime.

She could not give up on her father and brother, but neither would she abandon her fellow paladins and Altean mentors.

Hearing Keith, of all people, express appreciation for her presence and commitment brought her more happiness than she had felt since discovering the Green Lion. It was all the confirmation she needed to know that she was making the right decision.

* * *

Music: "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother"


	17. Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again

_Published July 9, 2017_

"Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again"

* * *

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves,and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. ... Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. ~ Ephesians 4:14-16, 25, New International Version

* * *

"This is what being a paladin of Voltron is all about. It's time to man up!"

Pidge's feeling of confidence and camaraderie dissolved when she heard that phrase. Strange that it should do so: she had never felt bothered when the other paladins spoke of her as a male. _"Boys, let's suit up." "It's been an honor flying with you boys."_ But this phrase suggesting that they had to be men bothered her now. She knew Hunk really meant they needed to be grown-up, tough. In that sense, she had been "manning up" ever since she decided to try passing as a boy. But it reminded her that despite everything they had been through, despite her new personal commitment to the team and its goal, they still did not know her for who she truly was.

If she was going to stay and be a permanent member of this team, she needed to trust them fully, and they needed to know her fully. Having passed on so many opportunities already, Pidge knew she should not let another one go by without taking advantage of it.

After she let the confession fall from her lips, she did not look at the others to see their reactions. She adjusted her glasses, looked at the room's periphery, rested her gaze on the floor, all while her mouth rambled—until Lance made a loud vocal reaction: _"You're a girl?"_ Pidge could guess what was going through his mind: all the sexist comments, sexual innuendoes, and dirty jokes he had made around her; all the times he had farted in her company (she had noticed that he never did so when girls or respected adults were around); all the unladylike things he had seen Pidge do. Maybe he was embarrassed about his behavior. Or maybe he was trying to reconcile his idea of what girls were like with what Pidge was like.

But the others, when she finally looked at them, were smiling, kind and understanding, unquestioning and accepting. If their words were true, they had figured out her secret already. Shiro complimented her for owning who she was, and then there was nothing more to say.

Only Lance tried to prolong the discussion. "When did this happen?" he demanded after the meeting adjourned.

"It didn't _happen_ ," Pidge insisted. "I've always been a girl."

"Well, when did you start acting like a boy? You never corrected our pronouns—and I've seen you go into men's bathrooms!"

"I started pretending when I joined the Garrison. Iverson had given me a restraining order because I kept trespassing and hacking to find information about my dad and brother."

That made Lance pause. "Really?" He was becoming incredulous and more impressed. Hunk and even Keith echoed his demand to know the full story, so Pidge told it as succinctly as she could. They seemed to grow in respect and admiration for her after hearing how many school rules and federal laws she had successfully broken. "Replacing the camera footage," Lance muttered, "Why didn't I think of that?"

Once the story was known, they necessarily shifted their focus to the mission on the Balmera. Pidge knew she was being a bit juvenile by teasing Hunk about having a _girlfriend_ , but she felt justified in it since he had called attention to his mistaken theory that she had a girlfriend.

Pidge thought about making some kind of poster to leave behind on planets they visited. _Lost: Commander Samuel Holt and son Matthew Holt. If found, contact Katie Holt, alias Pidge Gunderson, pilot of the Green Lion of Voltron_.

She decided against this idea when Shiro pointed out that the Galra might pick up such a trail, and if they knew about the Holts' connection, they might hurt or threaten Sam and Matt in order to get to Pidge and the other paladins.

Instead of a widespread campaign, she settled for leaving the information with their alien allies—not strangers like Rolo and Nyma, but communities who proved trustworthy friends and allies, like the Arusians and Balmerans. "If you come across my family," she asked them, "tell them I'm looking for them; and if you can contact us, let me know where they are." It would be a slower process, but it would be safer for her team and her relatives.

After saving the Balmera, they had a period of time which could have been relaxing in comparison to the excitement and chaos of the past few weeks. But they still had tasks that needed to be accomplished: Coran needed to get the Castle working smoothly after the battle; Shiro wanted to see if Sendak had any useful information; and Pidge wanted to examine the Galra crystal, in the hope that it might help reverse engineer other Galra technology.

The tasks should have been simple, in Pidge's opinion, because technology was supposed to be reliable. Even if something had glitches, if you took the time to examine and repair it properly, it would serve you well.

She lost some of her faith in technology when the Castle's systems turned on its inhabitants. It shook her almost as much as the food goo attack shook Hunk: they were both reminded of how helplessly dependent they were on the thing that interested them most. The experience probably should have been humbling, but was really more frightening than anything else.

When Allura willingly destroyed her father's artificial intelligence, erasing his memories and severing her last tie with him, Pidge could not help but think of her own father. Every day she sacrificed the opportunity to search for him, but she it was still possible for her to see him again. Allura had no such hope, and relinquished his recorded memories knowing that she would never see her father or hear his voice again.

Sam Holt had sometimes talked about legacy, in relation to discoveries or journeys or advances in technology that would benefit future generations. He always said, though, that his children would be his greatest legacy. Allura seemed to feel the same way about herself and Voltron.

All things considered, Allura seemed to recover from the loss of her father quickly. Not that she got over it—perhaps she might never get over it—but she accepted it and did not let it inhibit her daily work. Pidge wondered briefly if she herself would be able to cope so well after such a loss, but she could not let herself dwell on that hypothetical situation. All it did was increase her anxiety. Still, Pidge wondered, not for the first time, which was the greater burden: Allura's grief for what she had lost, or Pidge's anxiety for what she might be lose.

Music: "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" from _The Phantom of the Opera_ musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber.


	18. I'll Try

_Posted February 27, 2017_

"I'll Try"

* * *

Now we see only a dim likeness of things. It is as if we were seeing them in a mirror. But someday we will see clearly. We will see face to face. What I know now is not complete. But someday I will know completely, just as God knows me completely. ~ 1 Corinthians 13:12

* * *

It was not until Pidge decided to stay with the Alteans and paladins of Voltron that she finally examined the digitized Bible her mother had given her. During her time at the Garrison and on Arus, she had been too busy to bother with it. Every waking moment was dedicated to her search. Even after she committed to helping this team, she spent most of her free time collecting and synthesizing data to help them in their fight against the Galra. But now that she was resigning herself to a longer separation from her family, she welcomed the chance to do something they had enjoyed and wanted her to do. She had never harbored the same level of interest in theology or literature, but reading the words they had treasured and shared made her feel closer to them.

Pidge wondered if her father still felt keen on the idea of an omnipotent, benevolent god when he had lost so much and was suffering so greatly. She wondered if he still held the Bible in such high regard, whether its stories and instructions seemed more or less relevant than they had before his capture. He could probably identify more with the ancient Jews, who had suffered periods of enslavement and exile and watched the destruction of their home at various times in their history.

After memorizing her father's favorite verses, Pidge opened the folder and skimmed through the various books. She was surprised to find that some of the stories, poems, and letters resonated with her more strongly after everything that had happened since Sam and Matt disappeared.

She read the Old Testament accounts of families that were torn apart and reunited, and wondered if her parents and brother could relate to these ancient characters. Did Matt feel like Jacob's son Joseph, alone, enslaved, and imprisoned? Did her father feel like Job, old and forlorn and angry with God? Did her mother feel like Jacob, sending the youngest child far away in the hope of saving the family as a whole? Jacob had a daughter named Dinah. Did she miss her brother Joseph as much as Pidge missed Matt?

The way Joseph's brothers lied about his fate, telling their father he had died, cut almost too close, bringing back memories of the Galaxy Garrison's report that Sam, Matt, and Shiro were presumed dead.

The story of Jacob and his children ended happily. So did Luke's account of Jesus' family getting separated on a trip. "Didn't you know I must be about my father's business?" Pidge could almost identify with that response, since she had always wanted to follow in her father's footsteps, and did whatever it took to get into his place of work, the Galaxy Garrison.

The journey of the Magi had always been the Holts' favorite part of the Christmas story. The wise men studied, observed, and traveled a long way to find proof of their theories and fulfillment of their predictions. Pidge could relate to them now more than ever before. She hoped her own search would be as successful as theirs.

All four of the Gospels described an incident in which Jesus tried to preach in his hometown, where people knew him but did not believe what he said. The way the Nazarenes treated Jesus reminded Pidge of the way the Galaxy Garrison officials treated Shiro when he returned to Earth: Shiro tried to warn them of the coming danger, but they did not take him seriously, and treated him like a criminal or an animal. Matthew 13:57, Mark 6:4, Luke 4:24, and John 4:44 all quoted Jesus as saying something to the effect of, "A prophet has no honor in his own country." Pidge supposed it was true of planets as well. If the paladins were to return to Earth now, they would most likely be arrested, hospitalized, or institutionalized.

Jesus' parable of a shepherd leaving ninety-nine sheep in order to find the one that was lost (told in two different accounts, Matthew 18:12–14 and Luke 15:3–7) made Pidge feel justified in her decision to leave Team Voltron and find her family.

Saint Paul's analogy in 1 Corinthians 12, of the body having many parts, sounded like an apt description of Voltron, and made Pidge feel guilty for being so ready to leave. She understood, now, the interdependence that she and her friends and allies had developed, that needed to stay intact in order for them to succeed.

"You read the Bible?"

It was the same voice that had startled Pidge out of her stargazing at the Galaxy Garrison. She reacted the same way, crying out, dropping her computer, and twisting around to face the speaker. "Lance! I—uh—I was just—"

"Relax." Lance waved off her embarrassment, smirking slightly. "I'm only asking because last time you were doing something sneaky, you were getting intel about an event that changed our lives, and the course of an intergalactic war."

"This isn't like that," she assured him. "This is a leisure activity. … Though, it does also kind of have to do with my dad, so it has that in common."

Intrigued, Lance sat down cross-legged beside her. "How so?"

"He likes to read the Bible. His first name is Samuel, so he's always been interested in the prophets; and he named my brother Matthew, so we would have a reason to check out the apostles. My dad always liked reading verses about stars."

"That's cool. Are there any verses about lions?"

"Hm …" Pidge typed in the keyword and skimmed the results. "… there's 'the lion of Judah' … and Daniel in the lions' den … 'the lion shall lie down with the lamb'. Some poetical references, mostly as a metaphor for danger or enemies. Oh, here's a good one—psalm thirty-one, verse ten, 'The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.'"

"Is there a way to look up what parts would be read in a church each week? Like, for a Catholic Mass?"

"I don't know. On Earth you could probably find that information on the Internet, but obviously we can't access that way out here."

Lance was disappointed, and turned wistful, no longer looking directly at Pidge. "My family goes together … it always seemed boring, because the readings rotate and repeat every three years. So I didn't really keep it up while staying at the Garrison … but every time I came back, after being away at school, it was kind of nice to see that that routine was the same. Now I actually kind of miss it."

Pidge could sympathize with that. They all missed their homes, families, and old routines. "Well … you can borrow this, if you want to read it on Sundays or holidays."

He looked at her again, surprised and pleased. "Really? Thanks." Lance was truly appreciative; evidently it meant a lot to him. Then he asked casually, "Does your family believe in God?"

Somehow the question did not surprise Pidge as much as it might have if it had come from anyone else. Lance was impulsive and nosy that way. She shrugged and answered, "I don't know for sure. I think they do, to varying extents. My dad says science and religion are just two different approaches to understanding the world, so you don't have to believe only one or the other."

"So, what do you believe?"

Pidge fiddled with her glasses, avoiding eye contact with him. "I guess I'm agnostic. I have a hard time believing and understanding things that can't be backed up by science. I'm not opposed to the idea of a first cause, or creator, or a mode of existence after death … but when it comes to specifics of theology, I don't really buy into any one religion."

Lance nodded. "I guess I can respect that. I grew up going to church and Sunday school, but if I'm honest, even _I'm_ not sure how much of it I believe."

"Then … why do you stick with it?"

He shrugged. "I can't find proof that it's wrong, and it doesn't seem worth the trouble of giving it up."

That did not sound like a good reason to Pidge. In fact, it sounded intellectually lazy. Not that Lance being lazy surprised her.

She decided to ask him something she had wondered about, which he probably could not answer, but which might make him think for himself. "I have a question. Different parts of the Bible say that if you don't forgive people, God won't forgive you. Right?"

"Right. Jesus told a parable about that. If God cuts you a break, you should do the same for others. 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,' and all that."

Pidge tried to keep her voice from rising, though her skepticism remained audible. "So, my family and I should forgive Zarkon and his cronies for separating us? And Shiro should forgive them for what they did to him? And Allura and Coran should forgive them for destroying Altea and killing their people?"

Lance was clearly not prepared for this line of questioning. "Uh …"

"What happens if they don't?" Pidge challenged. "What happens if _I_ don't? Is it enough to try not to hate my enemies, or do I have to actively try to love them for it to count?"

"Good questions," Lance said loudly. "And my answer is … I don't know."

"You mean your religion doesn't have an answer, or it has an answer but you're not sure you believe it?"

"There's probably an answer in the Catechism, but I don't carry it around with me. So unless you've got a copy of it on that file," he said, pointing to her computer, "I can't be sure right now."

Pidge was a little irritated. She knew Lance was smart. How could he be so nonchalant or indifferent on such serious topics? "If your religion doesn't have the answers you're looking for, or it has one that you're not sure you believe, why do you keep at it? How can you have faith in it?"

Lance frowned at this, in a way that could have been either indignant or uncharacteristically serious. "I could ask you the same thing about _science_." Pidge almost gaped, and Lance smiled slyly, knowing he had surprised her and gained an upper hand. "Science hasn't given you all the answers you want, has it?" he pressed.

Memories of dozens of failed and half-finished experiments and research projects—some of her own, and many she had read about—flashed through Pidge's mind. "Um … no."

"But it has given _some_ , so you keep plugging away at it. You have faith that there _are_ answers, even if you don't know what they are yet; and you hope that you can find them someday."

"I never thought of it that way." Even as Pidge said this, something her father had said in one of their dinnertable discussions came back to her: _"Science isn't a body of facts, it's a method of investigation. Evidence doesn't prove anything, it only supports theories."_ She also remembered a key reason for her father's respect for the deity of the world's major monotheistic religions: He was supposed to be the God of Truth.

"You and my dad would probably get along," Pidge told Lance. "This kind of stuff fascinates him."

Lance smiled. "I'm looking forward to meeting him."

Pidge returned the smile, though she still felt the dull kind of anxiety and homesickness that had chronically weighed on her since Sam and Matt disappeared. Feeling that way was what drove her to read the Bible at all, so she could feel a little closer to her family … and maybe draw some consolation from the stories, poems, and prayers.

"Do you ever pray?" she asked Lance.

"Sometimes … if there's an emergency, or I'm in a really tight spot. Not the best discipline, huh?"

"Next time you get around to it … could you … mention my family? I don't know how any of them are doing, and I don't know if they pray …" Pidge squirmed uncomfortably under Lance's indulgent smile.

"I'll put in a good word for you, but if you're willing to believe it makes a difference, you could try it yourself. Or ask Mama Mary to pray for you."

Pidge looked at him blankly. "Mama Mary?"

"You know, the Virgin Mary? Jesus' mom?" Lance became somewhat sheepish under her stare. "Ah, I guess that's too Catholic. See, since Jesus is King, we think of Mary as the Queen Mother, sitting next to Him, advocating for us. Her intercession's powerful, because He doesn't like to refuse His Mother anything." Lance grinned, his eyes glinting with his usual irreverence. "Like at that wedding where they ran out of alcohol, and she asked Him to help keep the party going."

Pidge laughed at that phrasing.

"If you want, we can do it together. Or, if you need something more intellectually stimulating, I can teach you to pray in Spanish or Latin." Off of her surprised look, he explained, "Mom made us learn the rosary in three languages, so we could pray it with whichever friends or family members we were with. It's the kind of thing you can't forget."

"… Okay. I'd like to hear the Spanish."

Lance cleared his throat, made the Sign of the Cross, and then rested his hands palm-upward on his knees. "We offer these prayers on behalf of—and with a petition for the safety of—the Holt family." Then he closed his eyes and started reciting in rhythmic Spanish. Pidge knew enough Latin and scripture to recognize certain words and phrases. She deduced that it was the Lord's Prayer, addressing God the Father, and a prayer to Mary, the purported Mother of God. She would have to ask Lance another time about the Trinity and Incarnation. It was weird to think of God having parents, or of humans having the same parents as God. The latter thought was kind of comforting, though, to someone who had not seen their biological parents for months.

"… _ruega por nosotros, pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amen._ "

Pidge was a little startled by the last phrase. Once Lance had crossed himself, signaling that he was done, she spoke up. "That last word was 'death,' right? I thought, in Christianity, death wasn't supposed to have the final word?"

Lance laughed. "That's true. In English it goes, 'Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.' When you're about to die, you really want someone advocating for your soul." Immediately Lance thought better of his words, and tried to backpedal. "Not that I think that'll happen anytime soon, but, you know, it happens to everyone …"

"I get it," Pidge reassured him. She picked up her computer, then paused. "Hey, do you … could you write it out for me, real quick? In English?"

"Sure."

She opened a word processing document and turned her computer toward him. Lance typed out the two prayers and handed it back to her. Then he yawned and stretched his arms. "Well, that's all the catechesis for tonight."

"That's fine. Thanks for doing that for me," Pidge said sincerely.

"No problem." He clapped a hand on her shoulder as he stood.

They did not speak about the Bible or prayer again until after Pidge began studying the Altean language. Then one evening she came to Lance's room with a sheet of printed paper. "I translated those prayers into Altean," she said, offering it to him with a kind of casual pride. "I needed the practice, but I thought you might like the product, and since you gave me the text in the first place …"

"Wow, thanks, Pidge." Lance paused, looking it over, his facial expression shifting. "I don't suppose you could give me pronunciations, too? I mean, I'd use the Castle's tutorials, but I don't know if I'd survive."

Pidge smiled indulgently and said, "I'll talk you through it. Literally."

They spent hours going through each line until Lance could correctly enunciate every syllable. There was a great deal of goofing off involved, as Lance intentionally substituted ridiculous similar-sounding English words, or accidentally said Altean words that meant something entirely different from what he was trying to say. When they finally got through the text, they assumed a more serious posture, made the Sign of the Cross (Lance had to show Pidge how to do it correctly), and recited the prayers all the way through, this time trying to mean each word.

Pidge wished that this connection, or communication, or whatever this "communion" was supposed to be, was as easy as bonding with their lions. She knew so little about God and the saints, she doubted that she would recognize their presence even if they tried to show her that they were listening. But Lance believed in them, so maybe his faith could make up for her doubt.

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

Music: "I'll Try" by Jonatha Brooks, from _Return to Neverland_

60% of Cubans are nominally Catholic, so to me it seems reasonable to assume that Lance grew up in that faith. After posting many of my headcanons about this on my Tumblr, I finally started a real story about it, entitled "Catholic Means Universal."


	19. Giants in the Sky

_Published October 9, 2017_

"Giants in the Sky"

* * *

If an enquiry thus carefully conducted, should fail at last of discovering the truth, it may answer an end perhaps as useful, in discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not make us knowing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from error, it may at least from the spirit of error, and may make us cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much labor may end in so much uncertainty. ~ Edmund Burke, _A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful_

* * *

It was hard for Pidge to judge whether the task of saving Allura was _less_ daunting or _more_ daunting than the task of saving her family. Allura's case was different from the Holts' because hers had fewer unknown variables. They knew where to find her. But they also knew she was in the worst hands imaginable, and that saving her would be more dangerous and difficult than anything they had done so far. Even so, Pidge wanted to go sooner rather than later, since putting it off would give Zarkon more time to prepare for them.

Shiro was the only one whose attitude was even more urgent than her own. It was obvious that he felt guilty about Allura's capture. Pidge thought that was a little hypocritical, considering Shiro had done basically the same thing for Matt. (She wondered briefly if Matt felt guilty about Shiro's sacrifice to save him.) On the other hand, she understood his fear of losing someone so close. They had become friends and allies right away, but in the past weeks they had become like a family. And most of them had already lost people close to them, and did not want to experience such a loss again.

Of course things had to fall apart—literally, at some points. Somehow, someone—Zarkon? Haggar?—did something that tore Voltron apart.

Then, inexplicably, the particle barrier went down. Pidge was bewildered, and guessed that the others were too, but they did not question it. Allura was quick to make a wormhole, but then the witch did something that compromised the wormhole's integrity. The hangar doors opened, and the lions fell out, becoming separated once again.

It was like a bad dream. Pidge remembered Matt complaining about nightmares involving driving a car when he was getting his license. She used to have similar dreams about losing control of a ship she was piloting. Neither Pidge nor the Green Lion could control where they were heading. When they came out of the wormhole, they entered a place that had no gravity but lots of debris clustered together. They crashed through many layers of discarded junk, and eventually they banged against something big enough to stop them.

They seemed to be unharmed and out of immediate danger, but the Green Lion was out of energy and would need time to recharge before they could do much. Pidge remembered what her father had taught her about wilderness survival, and what her instructors had taught her about space: if you get lost, the best thing to do is wait for people to find you, but make yourself easier to find.

Shiro had not waited around to be found. When no one came looking for him, he came back. But maybe that was not a fair comparison, because they did not know exactly how he had made his way back to Earth. Pidge wondered if Matt and her father were waiting to be found. If so, she was not the one they would be expecting to find them. They would expect Shiro or some Garrison agents to rescue them. What would her reunion with them be like? Would they be glad to see her, or upset that she had left her mother and placed herself in danger?

It only took a few minutes for Pidge to realize she was incapable of sitting around idly. Her curiosity led her to explore, and her creativity drove her to find ways to amuse herself.

She was glad to see that the only life forms around were harmless, even friendly. She could not understand them when they tried to communicate with her, but they seemed to comprehend her when she spoke of her friends. She decided to make models of them out of the trash, to show the fuzzball aliens what they and their team dynamics were like. After weeks of living together, Pidge felt she knew them well enough to imitate each one's demeanor. It was the kind of thing that would have made Matt laugh.

Discovering the remains of a satellite gave Pidge an idea. The Galra had been able to detect the Blue Lion's energy on faraway Earth, and the Blue Lion had been able to find its way back to the castle. She could not locate the castle now, but maybe the Green Lion could send out similar energy to lead the castle to it.

Pidge had never built anything of such an immense size before, even after finding the lions and moving into the castle. Only the lack of gravity enabled her to move such massive objects, and the fuzzballs helped her keep control as she guided them into place. They reminded her of Gunther, when he learned a helpful skill. It was almost fun!

As it turned out, Pidge had done the right thing by not sitting around and waiting. Allura found her energy beacon mere seconds before Coran would have disappeared from existence in a timeloop. Once the castle was back on a stable plane, they were able to lock onto the other lions, which apparently had disappeared in pairs: Shiro and Keith were together, and Hunk and Lance. They went after the two eldest first, since Allura said Shiro had been injured in the battle and might not be able to control his lion. When they found him with Keith, he was badly hurt, both from his fight with Haggar and from a scuffle with carnivorous animals on the planet where he and Keith had crash-landed.

Once Shiro was secure in a healing pod, Pidge set to work on finding Hunk and Lance. Fortunately, they also found a way to make themselves easier to find: she detected an energy beacon from a planet made mostly of water and ice, and when Allura sent her there through a wormhole, she located the Blue and Yellow Lions on it. They came out partway so the Green Lion did not have to plunge into the depths. Lance would not shut up about the adventure they had, with _mermaids_ , if his story was true. Hunk corroborated it, but Pidge did not fully believe them until Coran and Allura showed her some evidence from the castle's historical archives.

They all waited outside Shiro's pod when the healing cycle neared its end. It was the first time all seven of them—or eleven if they counted the mice—had been together since they split up to infiltrate the Galra transportation hub. How incredible to think that had been just a few quintants ago! Shiro seemed restless in his unconscious state, as though having a nightmare. Pidge wished, and suspected that the others also wished, that they could reach out and reassure him that everything was okay. The poor guy had been through so much, he shouldn't have to relive his past traumas or imagine future trials.

When Shiro woke up, he was not as happy or relieved or grateful as they might have expected him to be. He was all of those things, but his attitude was still clouded with some kind of negative emotion. Even though they were all present and safe and reunited, he seemed … worried. Anxious. He waited patiently as everyone besides Keith debriefed him on what had happened during their separation, and he accepted a meal Hunk threw together to get his strength back. Once everyone had their turn, he explained what was on his mind.

"I wasn't just dreaming when I was in the pod. I was remembering. I remembered how I escaped. One of the Galra soldiers helped me. He set me on the course to find the Blue Lion, and left coordinates in my arm to find him again."

The other paladins and the Alteans could not have been more bewildered. It was the first time any of them felt any measure of skepticism toward their leader—at least since that first day when they became a team.

Pidge agreed to examine his Galra arm, but mostly just because he was the leader and she wanted to help him get some peace of mind. She did not see it at first, and mildly asks whether Shiro's vision might have been a dream rather than a memory. Shiro was positive. When Allura objected, insisting that the Galra could not be trusted, Shiro glared at her—an uncharacteristic behavior, considering how respectful he always was toward her—and said, "Your father must have trusted them once. Zarkon _was_ the original black paladin, wasn't he?"

Pidge, Hunk, and Lance were shocked. Once Keith reminded them of the evidence, Pidge felt stupid for not having figured it out herself. But until she had not known there was anything to figure out. Allura had said that Shiro's bayard was lost with its paladin, making it sound like the paladin was dead and the bayard was missing. Allura and Coran's secret was even more disturbing and mind-blowing than Pidge's. How could they have told the Earthlings about the lions and Alfor and Zarkon without mentioning that Zarkon had been Alfor's ally? Pidge could hardly believe they would withhold such pertinent information from the new paladins. If they had known, they might not have risked getting so close to Zarkon, since that gave him an opportunity to take control of the Black Lion.

Both Shiro's claim and Allura's confession disrupted the paradigm they had all been forming, either consciously or subconsciously. They had believed that all Galra supported Zarkon and would do anything to help him further his Empire. Pidge had understood Haxus's declaration about victory and death to be the philosophy of the Galra military, if not the whole Empire.

Shiro's account did answer some questions Pidge had been nursing since Shiro returned to Earth. It explained how Shiro escaped after his year of captivity, and how he knew about Voltron, and how he ended up in just the right location to find the Blue Lion. If Shiro's memory was genuine, this Ulaz was responsible for bringing the paladins together. Because of him, they had been able to save Earth from a coming Galra attack. He had given Pidge her first opportunity to search for her family beyond Earth's limits. Those were immense, unrepayable favors, which meant they were in his debt. But the possibility of finding allies was an even greater reason to look for him.

The fact that he infiltrated the Castle and attacked them, even dragging Pidge down the hallways by the end of her bayard, made them all raise their already heightened guard. Even when Shiro confirmed his identity and Ulaz willingly surrendered, they were more mistrustful than before.

Pidge remembered her old fears concerning the authenticity of Shiro's memories. This time, however, she voiced them. Hunk tried to point out flaws in this hypothesis, but then realized that his arguments actually supported rather than refuted it.

Surprisingly, Shiro did not budge. It was not the first time he had put personal feelings before pragmatism—he had done that when Pidge wanted to look for her family among Sendak's prisoners, and when Shay was used as bait for a trap, and when Allura was captured. Those were situations in which someone's life or safety were at stake, which made it understandable, even justifiable. This, however, it was the first time Shiro insisted on taking a risk when they were not certain about the facts of the situation. They did not know whether his memory was reliable or his supposed ally trustworthy. He was putting a lot of faith in his mind and his emotions, either of which could turn out to be wrong.

The revelation of the gravity generator amazed Pidge more than any invention or phenomenon she had ever seen before. It did not even appear to be magical, or whatever it was proper to call the energy in Allura and the Altean technology and the Balmera. It was just technology, manipulating the environment in a way she had never thought possible. Seeing it was a humbling experience, especially after her recent work of genius, realizing that she was not nearly as smart as this Slav of whom Ulaz spoke. It also made her want to meet Slav and other members of the Bade of Marmora.

Ulaz also revealed how they had escaped during their most recent battle: someone from the Blade of Marmora was working on the inside. Which meant they might have people in the right place to help find her family. Since Ulaz had been able to free Shiro, maybe someone could do the same for Sam or Matt.

The request came forth from Pidge's lips before she could stop it. "If you have people on the inside, can they tell me where my family is? They were taken the same time Shiro was." It was a bit of a risk, letting a Galra know that she had a personal connection to the Empire's prisoners. She did not want Zarkon and Haggar or anyone working for them to know she had that kind of vulnerability—it had been bad enough when Sendak blackmailed her by torturing Shiro.

Ulaz was not exactly sympathetic about her loss, but he showed a willingness to help. But before he could finish sending any potentially useful prisoner records, Keith asked a question about his giant knife, and then a new adversary showed up to attack them. Pidge let go of her thoughts of her family, and of any trust she had been willing to put in Ulaz.

As it turned out, they had misjudged him. Ulaz flew to the rescue, entering the robeat and opening the gravity generator from inside. He was like Samson, destroying the building that housed his enemies while he himself was still inside. The outpost disappeared, along with their one contact with the Blade of Marmora and any information they might have had about the missing Holts.

It was not a defeat—they lived to fight another day; but it did not feel like a victory, because they lost a valuable ally and all he had offered them. It might have been a case of "two steps forward, one step back." Shiro insisted that they would find the Blade of Marmora, but only after they figured out how Zarkon had found them.

Pidge took him at his word, and started new projects: checking all of the castle's systems, and collecting and analyzing data on Galra locations to predict where they were most likely to be.

* * *

Music: "Giants in the Sky" from _Into the Woods_ by Stephen Sondheim.

Author's Note: The new Garrison Trio fanzine _Space Cadets_ , about Lance, Hunk, and Pidge during their time at the Garrison, is featuring a short story I wrote! All proceeds will be donated to the Trevor Project. You can check out the Garrison Trio tumblr and twitter. Both printed and digital copies and additional merchandise are available for preorder through Tictail until October 19.


	20. Universe Electric

_Published February 2, 2018  
_

"Universe Electric"

* * *

 _Every atom, of every body, attracts every other atom, both of its own and of every other body, with a force which varies inversely as the squares of the distance between the attracting and attracted atom_.… Does not so evident a brotherhood among the atoms point to a common parentage? Does not a sympathy so omniprevalent, so ineradicable, and so thoroughly irrespective, suggest a common paternity at its source? … In a word, is it not because the atoms were, at some remote epoch of time, even _more than together—_ is it not because originally, and therefore normally, they were _One—_ that one in all circumstances—at all points—in all directions—by all modes of approach—in all relations and through all conditions—they struggle _back_ to this absolutely, this irrelatively, this unconditionally _one?_ ~ Edgar Allan Poe, _Eureka_

* * *

Pidge wished her family could see Olkarion's amazing creators and creations. Matt would be fascinated by the planet's evolutionary abilities. The way the Olkari manipulated their environment to their advantage without harming or destroying it put Earth to shame. It looked like magic, yet had entirely reasonable scientific explanations (though Pidge was pretty sure she was the only one of the paladins who understood these explanations).

It only got weird when Ryner started making it sound all philosophical. Sure, science was a way of understanding the world, and yes, Pidge knew that the universe naturally tended toward order, but she never thought of it in the terms Ryner used.

Then again, the idea of everything being connected was kind of like Voltron. It was the principle of distinct parts forming a whole—like the Trinity, which Lance named whenever he made the Sign of the Cross; or the body of Christ that Saint Paul talked about in his first letter to the Corinthians.

The Olkari saw their leader, Lubos, as their head, almost the same way Voltron saw the Black Lion and its Paladin as the team's head. But it turned out Lubos had given up on them, had quit being their leader in order to be the Galra's puppet. Fortunately, Shiro and Ryner were quick to rally the Olkari warriors and lead them into battle.

Of course the other paladins wanted to fight the cube weapon head-on rather than test its abilities and pick out its weaknesses. They were going to hurt themselves, their lions, and the Olkari because they did not take the time to observe, analyze, and draw conclusions. Pidge suspected a pattern from the moment it absorbed their laser and blasted it back to them. Why should they expect a different result from the same cause?

Seeing Lance and Keith use their freeze rays and heat rays made Pidge wonder and wish her own lion had an extra power like that. Coran's stories and their own experiences had made them aware of certain affinities between the lions and various natural forces. Keith and Hunk had both found that they could unlock larger versions of the usual weapons by inserting their bayards into their lions when Voltron formed. All Pidge could do as the left arm of Voltron was hold up the shield, which was important but not exactly remarkable.

Then again, as the Green Lion fell to the surface of Olkarion, Pidge could not help thinking that shield capabilities for the individual lions would be nice.

When she regained consciousness, she heard Ryner talking to her, saying they could fix her lion but she had to do her part to bond with it. Pidge had thought they understood each other well enough. She talked to it the way she talked to Gunther, or Rover, or the space caterpillars (some of whom had moved in with her). Their bond was pleasant, efficient, and usually sufficient for whatever situation they faced. If not mutually beneficial, it was at least positive for both of them.

Had she ever acknowledged how much she needed the Green Lion? How much she depended on it? Pidge closed her eyes and focused, reaching out with her mind and her heart. "Come on, girl. I need you." She could still hear her teammates' cries of distress. They had shifted from trying to find out if she was alright, to shouting that they needed her help. They were interdependent, as ready to request and accept help as they were to extend it.

"Remember what I said," Ryner reminded her. "You, the lion, the Olkari, we are all made of the same essence."

What happened in the next few moments was not something that could be understood with reason or explained with words. It involved emotion, intuition, instinct, and knowledge, but was more than any of them. Pidge understood how her own essence connected to that of the Green Lion, and how the two of them connected to nature and to the other lions and paladins. The Green Lion knew it could utilize that connection to nature, and showed Pidge what to do and how to do it.

Vines seemed kind of random for an elemental superpower, but when Pidge thought about it, they were actually fitting for her. She was someone who could plant herself in places where she was not supposed to be, and found ways to thrive there.

"The spirit of the Olkari resides in you." Hearing Ryner say that that, Pidge came closer than ever to understanding what it meant when a Bible book or a priest talked about someone having the Holy Spirit inside.

The whole team complimented Pidge's achievement when they debriefed for Allura and Coran. "Imagine if we took the Green Lion to Earth!" Hunk was excited at the prospect. "You could revegetate dying environments, make food grow during famine. Heck, with Green's plant power, Blue's water power, and Yellow's land power, we could fix Earth's whole agricultural system!"

Pidge tried not to laugh at his enthusiasm. Those were pretty smart and altruistic ideas. "I'll add that to my list of things to do when the war is over."

Basking in the glory of their victory ended abruptly when Zarkon's ship found them. Unfortunately that was also when the exhaustion of having been awake and active for so long finally hit the paladins.

When the chase finally seemed to be over for the time being, Shiro suggested a new strategy: they should go after the Galra instead of waiting for the Galra to find them. Pidge decided to tell the others about the algorithm she had been constructing. She could not tell whether their bemused reactions were from a lack of comprehension or simply surprise that she, the youngest, would be so forward-thinking and technical. Either way, they irritated her.

When they found out Keith and Allura had left, Pidge could not help thinking they were kind of hypocrites, considering the fuss they had made when she tried to leave. Even if their intentions were for the good of the team, they still debilitated it. At least when Pidge tried to leave the team, she had been considerate enough to tell everyone about her decision, so they could look for someone else to pilot her lion. Keith and Allura's departure caught the team completely off guard, leaving them unprepared to help the Taujeerians or, when necessary, fight or escape the Galra.

Saving the Taujeerians was like repairing Noah's Ark with the floodwaters already in sight. If Team Voltron had been even a few hours later, all the Taujeerians would have died. And they had merely gone there on a whim, because Pidge had decided to test out her "Galra-finder," as the others called it. It was sobering to remember that for every planet liberated, every alien race they saved, there were countless others they had missed, and were missing, and would miss. Pidge hoped her "Galra-finder" would help them find places where they needed to be, but they could only get to the ones closest to their present location. The Galra Empire was too vast, and the number of people in distress too numerous, for them to help everyone. But they had to push such disheartening thoughts way in order to focus on those they _could_ save.

Despite the intense stress of the battle, a few good things resulted from it. They confirmed that Allura and Keith were not Zarkon's means of tracking them, and learned that a lion could sense and respond to its paladin over a vast distance. Pidge held herself back from saying "I told you so" when they realized her hypothesis of Zarkon tracking them through the Black Lion was accurate. Now that they had identified the root cause of the problem, they could work toward finding a solution. While Shiro tried to strengthen his bond with the Black Lion, Coran and the remaining paladins set out to find more scaultrite so they would be able to travel better.

Pidge did not plan to buy anything besides scaultrite from the mall. She was already amassing a collection of souvenirs from the various places they visited. But seeing the video games in the Earth store brought her back to Earth, where she and Matt would have saved up for weeks, months, or years to be able to buy a new edition of a game.

Objectively, buying the game seemed a little childish, but they had been away from Earth for so long, something as normal as a video game seemed precious. Pidge had not played video games since learning that her father and brother were missing. She had not had the time or interest. _Mercury Gameflux II_ would help her relax and have fun in what little free time she had. It would also be the perfect thing to bond over with Matt when they reunited. That way, if he did not want to talk (which was possible considering the trauma he had experienced), they could still spend time together.

The ship was so sophisticated, it did not occur to Pidge and Lance that it would not have an adequate point of connection. Coming to that realization was maddening.

"Perhaps it's for the best," Allura suggested, not without sympathy, her hair bobbing in the ridiculous braids the mice had plaited. "We'll have other things to focus on soon enough."

Pidge bit her tongue to refrain from telling her off. Allura didn't know what she was talking about. Altea probably never had anything like video games. The Alteans probably used technology like the gladiator to simulate battles.

Hunk patted Pidge's shoulder sympathetically. "I need to get Kaltenecker situated, but once we've got some free time, I'll help you find a way to set it up."

"Thanks," Pidge mumbled, resigning herself to waiting.

Allura spoke up again. "Pidge, would you help me untangle my hair?"

"Fine." Having nothing else to do, Pidge ambled over to help. Running her fingers through Allura's ridiculously long locks, Pidge was reminded, for the first time in a long while, of how much she missed having long hair, especially in the first weeks after she cut it. She was used to her short hair now, and had forgotten the pleasant feeling of long, clean locks.

Pidge hoped that her hair would not return to the length it had once been until after she found her father and brother. She wondered how long their hair would be, or if they would have beards. Would she even recognize them? Would they recognize her? She pushed those thoughts away, and focused on undoing Allura's hair.

By the time they arrived at the coordinates Ulaz had given them, Pidge had let go of her disappointment about the video game. She was excited to see what the Blade of Marmora's headquarters would be like, since the base had been so technologically impressive. She was not disappointed by their ingenuity: the asteroid fragment was located between three deadly celestial objects, making entry and departure extremely dangerous and challenging even to a highly skilled pilot. This made Pidge's excitement turn into dark apprehension, though not as strong as Allura's outright suspicion.

It was Keith who insisted they had to go forward, disregarding the risk. It was quite a turnaround from the mistrust he had shown when they first started to look for the Blade of Marmora. But then again, Ulaz had sacrificed himself to save them, so it made more sense to trust the shadowy organization now.

Still, the atmosphere on the Castle-ship remained anxious and apprehensive as they waited for Shiro and Keith to return. Hours passed by without being able to contact them. To help pass the time, Hunk, Lance, and Pidge worked on getting the video game system set up, but they could not fully distract themselves when they felt they ought to be ready for whatever action turned out to be necessary.

Their anxiety finally crystallized into alarm when the Red Lion began attacking the asteroid. Keith's recent discovery that it could sense the danger he was in from a distance made them think he must be in need of rescue. They prepared to attack as soon as the path was clear; but when they were about to intervene, Shiro successfully contact them and said they were bringing people for them to meet.

Kolivan, the leader of the Blade of Marmora, said they needed to begin planning their attack on Zarkon right away, but Coran and Allura insisted that Shiro and Keith also debrief about their trip to the asteroid. They were both reluctant to talk about it, and took turns filling in the story.

Keith told them about his knife, which the paladins had seen him use before. He had even used it to spar with Pidge when she practiced with her bayard on the training deck. What they had not known was that under the cloth wrapping was a purple symbol, which matched the one on Ulaz's blade. Shiro told them about the trials Keith had chosen to undergo, risking his life for the sake of gaining knowledge about his connection to the Galra.

"Knowledge or death," Pidge repeated. She understood the value of truth, especially concerning one's identity and family, but even she had never risked that much. Then again, many scientists had done so, either out of pride or for the sake of progress.

They mentioned mindscapes, though they did not reveal what they had consisted of—perhaps it was too personal. Finally, though, they got to the end of the story, and the discovery they had confirmed: Keith had Galra heritage.

Pidge was surprised, but not scandalized. She remembered what Ryner had said about everyone and everything having a common origin. Her surprise was mostly scientific in nature: this was the first known case of humans procreating with aliens. Even that was not as hard to believe as it might once have been. "Considering all the interplanetary cultural exchanges that we've learned about—the Blue Lion being on Earth, the sphinx that played chess, alien malls having Earth merchandise—cross-reproduction doesn't seem that far-fetched."

"This explains everything!" Lance exclaimed. "Your _piloting skills_ , your _death wish_ , the way you felt the energy field around _my_ lion—heck, even the mullet looks like fur!"

"Knock it off, Lance!" Pidge barked. Once he backed off, she turned to Keith again. "So … was it worth it?" she asked, uncharacteristically timid.

Keith had been trying to appear put-together, holding on to the known facts, but at this question he seemed lost. "I don't know. I didn't learn as much as I hoped—like how the knife ended up in my family. All I confirmed was that … my family and I aren't who I thought we were."

Pidge looked at him with empathy. She had some understanding of how he felt. She had also harbored a secret about her identity and her family; but she had always known who and what she was, whereas he had to go through the process of finding out. "You know this doesn't actually change who you are," she said. "It just changes what we _know_ about who you are."

Keith nodded slowly. Pidge was not sure if he grasped what that really meant, but he seemed to know her deeper meaning. Their opinion of him was unchanged, for better or worse. They still saw him as their friend and ally.

When the Blades proposed a prison break to find Slav, the reclusive genius who invented the gravity generator, Pidge immediately volunteered herself for the mission. Shiro agreed without asking why. They both knew it would be an opportunity to gather intelligence pertaining to Sam and Matt.

As she ran through pictures of prisoners, Pidge wished she had a photograph of her father. If only she had carried one in her backpack, along with the one of herself and Matt. For now she had to settle for limiting her search to her brother. Hopefully finding one would lead to the other.

The facial recognition technology identified Matt out of hundreds of inmates in the Galra prison system. Instead of a location, the most recent data was a log report and some security footage. It seemed he had not gone to the prison camp with her father, as Shiro had hoped when he injured Matt. Instead, he had been in prison, until some rebels broke in and took him with them. Pidge did not know whether this was good or bad for him. Of course being a prisoner of the Galra was bad, but she had no idea what these rebels were like.

She wondered what Matt was doing now. Why did the rebels take him? Was he still with them? Were they holding him prisoner? Was he fighting the Galra? Had he found a way to return to Earth? Did he dare return without Sam or Shiro? Did he even know what had happened to either of them? Had he heard about Voltron?

What would the Holt family's relationships be like after they reunited? Would they automatically click, the way they always had after extended absences? Or would they each be so different that they no longer interacted or connected the same way? Would being together feel strange and novel, or ordinary and natural?

How would Pidge's relatives interact with her crew? She considered both groups of people as family, but Shiro was the only one who had overlapped them. Would they want to return to Earth right away, or stay in space to help in the war effort? Pidge could picture Matt tinkering with Hunk and Sam swapping military stories with Coran. She could imagine herself being addressed by both of her names, depending on who was speaking. The scenarios were easy to envision, though they made her heart ache, wanting them to be real. She contented herself with the knowledge that after this battle—hopefully the final conflict in the war—she would be able to devote more time to her search. Then she would find out whether these hopes could become a reality.

* * *

Author's Notes

Music: "Universe Electric" by Angie Miller.

I combined two earlier chapters, "Defying Gravity" and "Even a Miracle Needs a Hand," because I realized one was much shorter and they were both pretty much about the same thing. This means readers who reviewed my most recent update might not be able to submit a review on this chapter; but you can submit it under a different chapter. Sorry about any confusion this may cause. Thanks for your feedback!

To read about Pidge and Keith sparring, check out my short story cycle about Keith, "Make Straight His Paths."

The sphinx and chess game were in the VLD comic, issue #4, which focused on Pidge.

I was not sure whether to put Pidge and Keith's interaction after the Trials of Marmora in this cycle or that one; what do you think?

Pidge's differentiation between who Keith actually is and their understanding of who he is, is an allusion to Rachel Held Evans' memoir _Evolving in Monkey Town_ , in which she realizes that doubting/questioning one's knowledge of God is different from doubting/questioning God himself.

I'm going on a hiatus for Lent, February 14-April 1. Take care until then!


	21. Nowhere to be Found

_Published November 26, 2017, on the Feast of Christ the King_

"Nowhere to be Found"

* * *

"'I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord.I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.'" ~ Ezekiel 34:15-16, New International Version

* * *

Takashi Shirogane was missing in space. Again.

Unbelievable. And yet, somehow, it _was_ believable, at least to the four teenagers who had known or knew of him at the time of his first disappearance.

This time, Pidge did not feel the same kind or degree of devastation she had felt upon learning that the crew of Kerberos mission was missing. She knew much more about space, and about Shiro, than she had back then. She knew there were many reasons to be worried, but also many reasons to believe Shiro was still alive and would survive. He had said that Matt and Pidge were survivors, but if anyone could be called that, it was Takashi Shirogane, the officer of the Galaxy Garrison, the pilot of the Kerberos mission, the Champion of the Galra gladiatorial arenas, the Black Paladin of Voltron. No one could match his strength in body, mind, and conscience.

Pidge felt angry at herself. She had been so urgently determined to tow the Black Lion on board, but she had neglected to check that Shiro was present before telling Allura they were all ready. When she expressed her sorrow over this, the other paladins told her not to blame herself. Even Keith, who was more devastated than anyone else, said it was not her fault.

"This isn't the first time Shiro's gone off the radar," Lance reminded them, grasping for something positive in the bleak situation. "Everyone who assumed he was dead turned out to be wrong."

"Yeah, but a year went by before he turned up again," Hunk said gloomily. "Who knows how long it could be this time?"

"Don't say that!" Keith burst out. "We'll find him. Last time, no one on Earth bothered to look for him. We can, and we will."

"Of course we will try," Allura said, wringing her hands, "but we have much else to do, now that we've defeated Zarkon. The Empire is weak, but it still needs to be liberated, and quickly, before it can find anyone to take Zarkon's place."

It was a strange coincidence, Pidge reflected, that they had lost their leader at the same moment the Galra Empire lost its leader.

For a while, everyone was morose and out of sorts. Lance did not crack jokes as often, and when he did, it seemed to be more out of habit than genuine humor. Hunk tried to find solace in cooking, but gave up out of fear that he would get foodstuffs in his eyes and salty tears in his dishes. A few times, he resorted to stress-eating, but when this caused the others to express concern for his health, he improvised substances similar to chewing gum and jawbreakers to give himself the illusion of consumption. Lance and Hunk both found themselves most happy and at ease when they were in the field, liberating planets. Allura and Coran busied themselves with contacting various planets' leaders and laying out plans for a coalition that could fight the Galra Empire together.

For the second time in her life, Pidge buried herself in research and investigation regarding the Kerberos crewmembers. She knew that Shiro ought to be her priority, but she had almost nothing to go on, so she took the relative lull in the war effort as an opportunity to follow the lead she did have: the video footage of Matt. She began making short trips to make inquiries about the people in the video and the clothes and weapons they used.

Keith also went on trips in the Red Lion, spending long stretches of time searching for Shiro. When Keith was around, they tried to give him his space, knowing he had even more on his shoulders than the rest of them. After Allura and Coran, Keith had probably suffered more loss than any of them. He had lost his parents when he was young, and missed Shiro after the Kerberos crew was captured; he had met Thace only to leave him behind to die; and now Shiro was missing again.

Pidge, however, knew that even when people wanted to be alone, it was nice to at least have the option of company. So on a day when she and Keith both happened to be at the castle between expeditions, she carried her computer to the lounge, where Keith was loafing on a couch. He only glanced at her when she sat down. "Hey," she said. "Mind if I read out here?"

Keith's expression was mistrustful, his tone prematurely annoyed. "If you're here to try to talk to me, I'm not really in the mood."

"I'm not. I come here to read anyway."

"Oh."

Pidge settled on a couch and pulled up the Bible files. She jumped between the ends of the four Gospels, comparing their accounts of Easter Sunday. The tomb had been as empty as the Black Lion after the battle: there was no dead body, which made the followers doubt that the leader was dead, but the leader's absence made it impossible to know for certain, until he returned.

Out of the corner of her eye, Pidge saw Keith looking at her. When she raised her eyes to him, he looked away immediately, so she ignored him; but he reminded her of something else she wanted to look for.

After she had been scrolling through passages for a few more minutes, Keith asked, "What are you reading?"

Pidge quirked an eyebrow over her light-filled glasses lens. "I thought you didn't want to talk."

Keith scowled. Pidge conceded, "The Bible."

At this, the annoyance in Keith's expression faded, replaced by surprise and curiosity. "You have a Bible?"

"Yeah." Pidge adjusted her glasses, feeling like she was on sensitive ground. "You've read it?"

Keith shrugged. "Bits and pieces. When I was trying to piece together the lion carvings in the desert, I researched different folk tales about lions, and some Bible stories came up."

"Do you have a favorite?"

After a moment's thought, Keith admitted, "I liked John the Baptist."

Pidge smiled. Of course Keith would identify with a desert hermit awaiting a special arrival. "I like David and Goliath, and stories about families that overcame challenges together. I find myself relating to lots of different parts. There are so many symbols and parallels."

"Like what?"

"Like … fighting for justice, hoping for peace … leaving or losing your home … getting separated from people you love."

Keith grunted.

"You remind me of Simon Peter. He had a lot of faith in Jesus, and Jesus wanted him to lead the Apostles and other disciples." Keith had a visible emotional reaction to this, but Pidge could not tell what emotion it was that flashed across his face. She continued, "But when Jesus predicted that he was going to die, Peter refused to believe it." Keith looked surprised at this revelation. Pidge gave him a lopsided smile. "Plus, he made a lot of mistakes, and was kind of a hothead, like you."

Keith thought about this for a moment before querying, "You think Shiro's like Jesus?"

"Well, he is our leader. And you're pretty close to him, like Peter was to Jesus. And I think he sees more in us than we see in ourselves, the way Jesus seems to with his followers."

"Wow." There was a strange mixture of admiration and sarcasm in Keith's voice. "That's deep, Pidge."

She shrugged modestly. "Jesus talked a lot about the people he led. Sometimes he used kingdom imagery, sometimes pastoral imagery. I'm not sure exactly how that would translate to our situation. I don't know if Shiro is our lost sheep, or if _we're_ the sheep without a shepherd."

Keith rolled his eyes, but Pidge could have sworn the corners of his mouth turned up for a moment. "Okay, now you're just seeing things."

"Once you learn about all these analogies it's hard _not_ to see them!" She wondered about that sometimes. Was pervasiveness an indicator of truthfulness? Or was it simply a change in perception, like a new pair of glasses?

Keith interrupted her musing with a question. "Do you believe them? The stories?"

"Lance asked me that recently. Sometimes I think I'd like to. It's nice to have something to believe in … and to know someone believes in you. But I think I have that, in my family and friends."

"Yeah." Keith turned his head to look back at the void of space. "After my parents, Shiro was the first person who really believed in me."

Pidge nodded. She knew exactly what he meant. Shiro always encouraged people to believe in themselves. He had repeated her father's words of encouragement when she was anxious about finding her lion. He had reassured her that they would find Sam and Matt. And on more than one occasion—including their most recent battle—he had rallied his teammates' spirits when they most needed confidence in themselves and each other.

"I came to space to find my brother," Pidge reflected. "But I ended up with four brother-figures … plus a big sister and wacky uncle." She met Keith's eyes and half-smiled at him. "Anyway … I'm not giving up on Shiro any more than on Matt and my dad. We'll keep looking until we find them."

Keith let out an exasperated sigh, letting his head fall back on the couch pillows. "What could happen in the meantime? He was gone for a year, long enough to fight in arenas, lose his arm, be tortured and experimented on, probably be forced to kill people…" Keith's breath hitched, and he turned away from Pidge, unable to continue.

Pidge did not know what to do. She was good at having intellectual conversations, and she understood what Keith was feeling (possibly better than anyone else on the team), but she had no experience with giving people comfort, especially people who were so reserved. "Do you want me to go?" she asked tentatively.

It took a moment for Keith to answer; when he did, his voice was tightly clipped. "I want you to do whatever it takes to track down Shiro as quickly as possible."

"I will." Pidge closed her computer, then leaned over and gave Keith a quick, slightly awkward one-armed hug before she stood and left the room.

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

I chose the epigraph today after hearing it read at Mass.

For more on Keith's investigation of the lion carvings and his similarity to John the Baptist, check out my short story cycle "Make Straight His Paths."

I had a tricky time deciding whether Keith would have this discussion in this story, or in "Make Straight His Paths," or with Lance in "Catholic Means Universal"; and whether it would be before or after the team found out about Shiro wanting Keith to be his successor, which parallels Jesus designating Peter as the rock on which the Church would be built (Matthew 16:13-20) and asking him to take care of the flock (John 21:15-17).

 **Music:** "Nowhere To Be Found" by Nathan Tasker


	22. Playing With the Big Boys

_Published June 18, 2018_

 _Takes place throughout Season 3_

"Playing with the Big Boys"

* * *

"Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"

"Yes."

"All like ours?"

"I don't know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound—a few blighted."

"Which do we live on—a splendid one or a blighted one?"

"A blighted one."

"'Tis very unlucky that we didn't pitch on a sound one, when there were so many more of 'em!"

"Yes."

"Is it like that _really_ , Tess?" said Abraham, turning to her much impressed, on reconsideration of this rare information. "How would it have been if we had pitched on a sound one?"

~ Thomas Hardy, _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_

* * *

One of Pidge's greatest fears was of the unknown—not mere variables, which were a matter of course in the scientific method, but completely unexpected factors, circumstances and developments that cast a different light on everything you thought you knew, forcing you to shift your paradigm and uproot your previous understanding of how the world worked.

After the discovery that aliens were real and had kidnapped her family, the biggest surprises were that Zarkon had once been a paladin and that there were Galra fighting Zarkon from inside his empire. As weeks went by in the aftermath of their fight with Zarkon, Pidge kept a running list of the many other surprises that came their way.

Shiro disappeared for no discernible reason. They had no evidence, no data to work with, only hypotheses they could not test.

The Black Lion wanted Keith, of all people, to be the new head of Voltron. If pressed, Pidge would have guessed Allura to be the best candidate, since she was the group's diplomat and decision-maker. Keith was a skilled fighter and could pull off amazing stunts, but he was antisocial and hot-tempered—the kind of person best fit for a spy or a special agent, not the kind you wanted to lead negotiations or charges into battle.

Zarkon had a son. The paladins did not want to think about how that could have happened, but Pidge was too much in the habit of developing hypotheses and theories to stop herself. They had known that the Empire would not collapse when they killed Zarkon, but they had not known of an heir apparent.

Multiple realities existed. It was not clear whether each reality was its own universe within a larger body (a multiverse?), or there was one universe containing multiple realities. Pidge and Hunk spent hours afterwards discussing theoretical physics and trying to reconcile their knowledge with their experience.

Shiro returned, saying he had again been captured by the Galra, and again not knowing exactly how he had escaped. Pidge wondered if they were in a time loop, something Allura had confirmed was real. Had they stumbled into one of those during or after their reality-jumping adventure? Because Shiro's sudden return and inability to remember what happened in his absence was suspiciously similar to how he returned after Ulaz freed him. This time, though, he seemed to be in even worse shape. He smelled awful, having been confined to that tiny pod without a bathroom to wash up in. The worst body odor Pidge had ever smelled was Matt's scent after his workouts, back when she was helping him get physically fit for the Galaxy Garrison. Shiro's smell was far more pungent.

Pidge hung back while Keith and Coran practically carried Shiro to the infirmary. She could not do much in the way of medical treatment. She was of more use analyzing the data they collected on their missions. But she and everyone else frequently checked on Shiro's status to see how he was doing.

She had sometimes imagined bringing Matt and their father back home to her mother. Colleen would probably hover over them, asking what they needed, offering anything they might want. The paladins and Alteans were the same way, though they tried not to be overbearing about it.

At Keith's insistence, they all took turns sitting with Shiro as he recovered. Keith did not want him to be left alone, ostensibly because Shiro was in such a shaky physical and mental condition, but probably also out of fear that, if left alone, Shiro might disappear again. And maybe it was also to keep Shiro from feeling as alone as he had been the past week.

When it was Pidge's turn, Shiro was asleep. She brought her computer with her, thinking to continue working, but now that she was in the same room as Shiro, she found herself unable, or unwilling, to draw her attention away from him. She reach out and held his left hand, his only remaining human hand, which lacked the glove he used to wear on it. Pidge's hand was tiny in comparison. Her fingers were slender, nimble from typing and working with delicate scientific instruments; his were rough, strong from fighting in gladiatorial matches and paladin missions.

When Shiro woke and found Pidge holding on to him this way, he squeezed her hand, which was one of the most reassuring things Pidge had ever experienced. She swallowed to keep her emotion at bay. "Hey Shiro," she managed to say casually.

"Hey Pidge."

That greeting made her heart almost ache. For one thing, it was the same way Matt used to greet her. For another, it had been a long time since she had heard Shiro say her name, and during that period she had not been sure she would hear it again.

Shiro seemed to notice her emotions despite her efforts to hide them. "You okay?"

Pidge found that question, coming from him to her, laughable. "After—everything— _you're_ asking if _I'm_ okay?"

Shiro blinked, then shrugged, mumbling something. "What?" Pidge asked, afraid she had said something wrong.

"It's … easier, I guess … at least for me … to worry about other people instead of myself."

That fit what Pidge knew of Shiro's caring personality, slight hero complex, and leadership ability. He had supported all of them through their training and other adventures—Pidge's search for her family, Keith's discovery that he had Galra family—while dealing with his own trauma from the Kerberos mission.

For a long moment Shiro just lay on his side, looking at her. Pidge returned his gaze until it felt, to her, awkward, and she glanced down, only to look back at him again. When she spoke, she tried to keep her voice gentle, almost nonchalant. "I know you didn't leave us on purpose, but try not to let it happen again, okay? I already lost one dad and brother." Shiro had sort of filled in for both in their absence, sometimes acting like a brother, sometimes like a father. "Losing you was like having it happen all over again."

Shiro nodded, both understanding her feelings and agreeing to her request. "Have you made any progress searching for them?"

"I analyzed the footage I got from Beta Traz, and went on some research trips, but I've been at a standstill the past couple weeks. Since Lotor showed up I haven't had enough time to investigate." Pidge regarded Shiro's long, unkempt hair and beginnings of a beard. "You look so different, and you were only gone a few months. I can't imagine how they'll look after being away for over a year. Not that it matters, but, you know. It shows how a lot has changed."

"Yeah." That one syllable sounded hard for Shiro to say. The silence that followed it felt heavy. It seemed as though Shiro was looking inward on himself.

To diffuse the solemn mood, Pidge rambled, "I can't decide if I like your hair or not. I mean, if you washed and brushed it, it might look cool. But maybe I'm just jealous because I miss having long hair."

That brought a partial smile to Shiro's face. "I missed you, Pidge."

She could no longer keep her tears back. "I missed you too." She leaned over and hugged him, which was a little awkward because he was still lying down, but he put his arms around her and held her as best he could. Though still tired, he was not as feeble as he had been when Keith found him, and he had the same warmth and strength Pidge remembered. At least that had not changed.

The next surprise was the discovery of Lotor's teleduv pieces and his ship made from the trans-reality comet's ore, coupled with the fact that Lotor was fighting Zarkon's forces rather than commanding them. What kind of leader was he trying—or pretending—to be? Whose side was he on—the Galra Empire, their enemies, or his own third party?

After their run-in with Lotor and his generals in the Ulippa System, the paladins and Alteans held a meeting to assess their information and come up with a working hypothesis. Shiro insisted that Coran tell them the full story of how Voltron was made, so they could figure out what Lotor was doing with the same kind of ore.

The thing about the story that made Pidge uncomfortable was that she understood, and could almost agree with, Honerva's perspective. When you found out about something new, learning more about it made it less frightening. But there were ethical boundaries that one had to follow, like not endangering people who were unaware of or unwilling to help with an experiment. All the Galra should have had a say in what should be done about the rift on their planet. Honerva had been wrong to take such risks without their consent, and Zarkon had been wrong to support her with his political and technological power.

But the story finally helped the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Now they had a fair idea of Lotor's goals, which meant they might be able to anticipate his actions and not be so caught off guard in the future. Pidge just hoped no more proverbial wrenches or curveballs would be thrown their way.

* * *

Music: "Playing With the Big Boys" from _Prince of Egypt_ , by Hans Zimmer, Stephen Schwartz, and John Powell.


	23. Hey Brother

_Published July 1, 2018_

"Hey Brother"

* * *

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. ~ Isaiah 55:12, New International Version

* * *

Matt asked the rebel communications specialists to let him know if Earth was ever mentioned in the data they collected. As he learned how to use their technology, he began listening and searching on his own. He hoped Earth would never come up in any news relating to Galra activity—no news would truly be good news—but if the Galra ever came close to Earth, he would want to be aware.

"I want to do more to help," Matt said, multiple times, to multiple people.

He needed training first, for combat, stealth, and alien technology. He had been trained as a communications specialist on Earth, so he was able to carry over some of the skills he already possessed. Self-defense, however, had never been among his talents, though some basic courses had been required at the Garrison.

Matt did not feel confident handling swords or projectile weapons, but he found he had an aptitude for the staff. He understood the physics involved in handling it, and learned, through trial and error, how to adjust his own force and speed in combat.

One day, someone finally passed along a bit of information. "We got some intel on Voltron. The new paladins are from Earth, like you."

Matt was surprised, and not sure whether he ought to feel excited or fearful about what this could mean. Had Earth gotten involved in the war? Did the Galaxy Garrison, or the general public, know about aliens? Matt was not sure whether to hope the paladins were people he knew, or complete strangers. He would not wish this fight on any of his old friends or classmates or mentors.

His combat training went on for what he estimated was a few months in Earth time. Finally he was allowed to go on missions, acting as technician, comm officers, or fighter as the need arose. Things went well, until an unfortunate hand-to-hand clash with some Galra sentries and soldiers, during which Matt's mask fell off. The droids and sentries were able to view his face long enough to scan it.

Matt managed to either steer clear of records or destroy them, but enough people saw his face and learned of his identity that he became fairly well known in some intelligence circles.

A few weeks later, word reached Matt and his friends that there was a bounty on his head. At first, the news made Matt feel strangely proud. It was a mark of how significant a threat the Galra considered him. But it complicated his already precarious work and living situations.

"You should go further into hiding," Te-osh advised him. "Avoid direct fighting for a while."

"Got any suggestions?"

"We could place you at a listening outpost."

Matt made a face. "That sounds … safe but potentially tedious."

"You did say you were a communications specialist. And now that you've learned more languages and codes, you might be able to help us decrypt scrambled messages."

"There's something else," another rebel said. "We're setting up a way for high-bounty rebels to stay in touch while throwing the Galra off their trails. We're making a place where the information will be hidden in plain sight but the Galra won't understand it."

Matt agreed to go with them and check out the place. It turned out to be what looked like a stone memorial, like for veterans or martyrs, with a vast field of tombstones falling behind and below it. Many of the metal graves had flashing transponders embedded in them.

When they landed the shuttle in front of the statue, they could read the inscription: _In honor of the 127,098 brave warriors who stood against tyranny. The quest for freedom is won through sacrifice._

"Now it can be one hundred twenty-seven thousand ninety- _eight_ ," the pilot said with a grin.

"You mean these are all decoys?"

"Some of them are real. Others are waiting to be used."

Matt felt almost queasy. "This is …" He held back the words _messed up_.

"It's not technically a lie. It _does_ honor rebels. It doesn't say that they died, or that anyone's buried here. It just gives a false impression to anyone who doesn't know better."

That worried Matt. If his father or Shiro came looking for him, and found this place, they might think he was dead, unless they had some prior communication with rebels who told them otherwise. He wondered if he could leave a message of some kind, one that would lead them to him without giving his location away to bounty hunters …

Of course! The cipher he and Sam had developed! He had taught it to Shiro while they were traveling together. Pidge also knew how to use it, and could share it with the Galaxy Garrison or the Voltron paladins.

After installing his transponder into his fake grave, Matt put the cipher for the coordinates of his new outpost in the spot where his date of birth would have gone. Anyone from Earth who came here would presumably be familiar with Matt's career and so be able to recognize that his birthday was wrong. The only people who would how to decode the cipher were Sam, Shiro, and (if the worst happened and Earth got involved in the war) Pidge, but even if they couldn't solve the cipher themselves, they might be able to get in touch with Pidge on Earth, who could give it to them.

Daily life at the outpost was, for the most part, lonely. Matt had just gotten used to living among comrades, coworkers, and even people he felt lucky enough to call friends. Now he had no one to talk to. The only voices he heard were the ones he picked up from Galra radio chatter.

It was not, however, boring. The challenge of deciphering coded messages occupied him for days at a time. It kept his mind active, something he and Sam and Shiro had struggled to do in captivity. He also exercised, keeping in shape and continuing to build up his strength, and practiced with his staff every day, going through drills and fending off imaginary opponents.

The only things that broke up the monotony were scheduled visits or deliveries from the rebels, and a few times when he picked up some information urgent enough to pass along to them.

Then, one quintant, Matt got an alert signal. Someone was entering, though no one was scheduled to come, and no one had called ahead to alert Matt of their approach. Matt put on his mask, grabbed his staff, and hid in the shadows off to the side.

The person who jet-packed down from the ceiling entrance was too small to be Sam or Shiro. If they were part of the rebel alliance, they would have contacted Matt, given some advance notice, or indicated who they were. That meant it could only be an enemy, someone trying to capture him or infiltrate the rebel network. So instead of asking questions, Matt came up behind the intruder, who turned and parried his attack. They fought their way around the spy facility, the smaller one aided by its jetpack and a weapon conjured from one armored arm.

After knocking the intruder down to the floor, Matt raised his staff up to strike again, but instead of defending or attacking, the assailant shouted, "What have you done with my brother?"

The words confused Matt, and the voice startled him because it was familiar. His first thought was, _This person lost a brother? Like Pidge lost me?_ And that voice sounded like one he had not heard in months—or years at this point—one he had almost forgotten the sound of.

He paused long enough to actually look at the person's face, darkened in its helmet. It looked human, he realized, and then, to his shock, he _recognized_ it, as well as the voice that had shouted those words. Empathy made room for suspicion, though it was at odds with incredulity: _Could it be …?_

Matt started to slide out of his stance, but then the human attacked him again, knocking his helmet off and causing him to stumble back. He could not fight with his mind spinning as it now was. The last thing Pidge had said to him before he left Earth was that she would come to find him if he did not come back. Was it possible that she had actually done what she half-jokingly said she would?

He turned around to look, not even trying to stop her or shield himself as she came at him with her weapon, which stopped mere inches from his neck when she saw his uncovered face.

The two siblings stared at each other, finally recognizing each other fully. Matt could see his sister's face clearly through her helmet's visor. "Pidge?" he managed to say.

She seemed almost as shocked as he, but even more emotional. "Matt?" she choked.

Matt got to his feet slowly, and Pidge lowered her weapon, which disappeared from her hand. They fell into each other's arms, hugging tightly despite her hard armor and his mismatched uniform pieces.

While Matt felt like he could hardly speak, Pidge started to babble, as she did when anxious or emotional. "Oh my gosh! Ever since the Kerberos Mission, they said you were dead, but I knew in my heart that you weren't!"

So that was what the Galaxy Garrison had assumed, as Matt and Sam and Shiro had speculated. Of course, Pidge would not have accepted such a vague, open-ended answer. And yet for her to have come all the way out here, literally in the middle of nowhere in a universe far bigger and more dangerous than they had ever imagined …

He found his voice and said, "I can't believe you found me. It doesn't seem possible." He pulled away and put his hands on each side of her helmet, looking closely at her face. It really was her—his sweet, smart, sassy, supportive sister.

She was smiling now, her eyes shining with happiness as well as tears. "The thought of you and Dad kept me going, inspired me to do the impossible."

"Okay. But seriously, how did you get this far into space?" While Matt, Shiro, and Sam had suspected the Garrison might send people to look for their missing astronauts, they had not thought they would send such young cadets, if that was what Pidge had become.

"It's a long story. Have you by any chance heard of Voltron?"

Matt frowned, surprised, though he probably should not have been by this point, to hear that she was familiar with this rumor. "Of course I've heard of Voltron." Had the paladins helped her find him?

Pidge's smile turned almost sly, like she had a secret or good news to share, or like she was feigning shyness while actually feeling quite proud of herself. "Well … I'm one of the paladins."

For a moment Matt could only stare at her, his mind processing before allowing itself to believe and react. "No. No! Seriously? _You're_ a paladin of Voltron?" It actually made sense—the armor, the technical and political advantages needed to find a rebel in hiding. " _That's awesome!_ " He picked her up and spun her around, even more excited for her than she had been for him when he got into the Galaxy Garrison.

Their euphoria burst like a bubble when another voice, smug and sinister, spoke from across the room. "What a touching reunion."

Seeing each other had distracted the siblings from the entrance of another being, a dark reptilian alien wrapped in a dark cloak. "Who are you?" Pidge demanded.

"Who I am is not important. I'm here to collect the bounty on your brother Matt. But a paladin of Voltron and the Green Lion … what a day."

Getting caught alone would have been bad enough, but to have Pidge in danger as well was far worse. Scared as he was of going back to prison himself, there was _no way_ Matt could let Pidge get captured and turned over to the Galra. As a paladin of Voltron, she was more valuable to the rising rebellion, and the Galra would probably treat her even worse than they had treated Matt had during his own imprisonment. He would not give them that chance.

Matt said, "Stay back, Pidge," at the same moment Pidge said, "Stay back, Matt." They looked at each other in surprise, then grinned, mutual understanding and agreement passing between them. Their fight with each other just a few minutes ago had shown that each of them was now a capable fighter. Neither of them needed the other to protect them while they watched from the side; they could work together, as equals.

Still, that did not stop Matt from feeling a surge of righteous anger when the alien's electric whip struck and shocked Pidge. "Stay away from my sister!" Matt was actually glad that the whips hurt him more than Pidge.

Pidge drew the alien up into the scaffolding and away from Matt, who needed a moment to recover and think of a plan. When she returned to the floor, Matt shouted, "Pidge! The panel!" He did not need to say more, to explain his idea of exposing the electric whip to the asteroid's magnetic field. He knew her well enough to know she would understand what he meant and do what she needed to do.

Winning that fight may have been the most satisfying accomplishment they had ever shared up to that point. Their minds had always been in sync, but now their bodies and spirits seemed to be too. After knocking out the intruder, they slipped right back into complimenting each other's brilliant ideas, bantering and bonding over science. It was wonderful to see that had not changed. And yet, all the changes they had experienced seemed to have been for the better. They were even stronger and smarter and more capable now than they had been on Earth.

"I have the coolest little sister in the whole galaxy," Matt said, feeling prouder than ever. The only thing that could have made the moment any happier would have been for their parents to share it with them. But the fact that Pidge had been able to track him down made him more confident than ever that their family could, and would, be whole once again. "Now all we have to do is find Dad."

As he spoke, Pidge removed her helmet, and Matt saw that her hair was short now, almost as short as his had been on Earth. But he was even more surprised to see her put on a pair of glasses, which he immediately recognized as his own, from before the Garrison fixed his eyes. He remembered giving them to her right before he left. She had even tried them on herself. "You kept the glasses?"

After everything that had changed and caught him off guard, for him to be incredulous about that detail was rather ironic. But Pidge smiled fondly. "Of course I did." They had been his last gift to her. "I liked having something of yours with me. Plus, they completed my disguise while I was working undercover at the Garrison."

By this point Matt simply resigned himself to the inevitability of being surprised and amazed by everything Pidge had to tell and show him. He glanced at the unconscious intruder and jerked a thumb at him. "I need to tell the rebels about him, but after we sort things out, I want to hear all about it."

* * *

Music: "Hey Brother" by Avicii

Author's Note: This update was going to cover all of Season 4, but I ended up writing so much that I decided to split it into two chapters. More sibling bonding to come!


	24. Better Together

_Published August 7, 2018_

"Better Together"

* * *

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful , speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. ~ Ephesians 4:14-16

* * *

After securing the unconscious bounty hunter, Matt sent his contact a request for someone to take his place at the listening outpost. Pidge needed to get back to her team, and there was no way the two of them could part just after finding each other; plus, they agreed, the paladins and rebels would probably be good allies.

Once they received an affirmative message, they had to wait for Matt's replacement to arrive. They welcomed the wait time, as it let them begin to catch up on everything that had happened while they were apart.

Pidge demanded that Matt go first. It was only fair, she said, since he had heard news about the Voltron paladins, whereas she had not had any news about him for all those months. So he told her about the prisons, the breakout, and his time with the rebels.

Pidge's expression became sad when he mentioned Te-osh. "I met her while I was looking for you just now. She's the one who gave me your transponder code."

"Really? Great! I'm glad you got to meet her. How is she?"

His excitement made questions made tears spring to Pidge's eyes. Matt blinked at this reaction, feeling dread for the first time since either of them had mentioned Te-osh. "Is she …"

"When I was looking for her, to ask if she knew where you were … she was injured in an aerial battle. When I got to her she gave me your transponder code; then she died. I was with her."

Matt was stunned. He had been aware of casualties among the rebels, but he had never lost someone as close to him as Te-osh had been.

And Pidge had been with her when she died. That had probably been a comfort to Te-osh, to have an ally with her when she died, but for Pidge to go through that—

"Were you close?" she asked tenatively. She was not thinking about herself, but about Matt and how this news impacted him.

"Yeah … relatively speaking." Te-osh was not the only rebel Matt had befriended and looked up to, but she had saved him, looked after him, and taught him about being a rebel, a warrior. He tilted his head back, resting it against the metal column, and found himself blinking back tears. "She was … kind of like the big sister I never had."

Pidge reached out and squeezed his hand. To him, it was a reassurance that this was real, that she was here with him and for him. To her, it was a promise that she would not let anything happen to him or his friends or allies.

"I wish you could've seen her in action. She was awesome."

Pidge nodded and acknowledged, "She was a hero."

"Yeah … I guess she was my hero." Matt was trembling now, the intensity of his shock and euphoria and sorrow threatening to overwhelm him. He swiped at his eyes with his free hand, trying to stave off tears.

"It's okay to cry, Matt," Pidge said. "I cried when it happened, and I barely knew her. I won't think less of you."

Matt looked at her, smiling fondly and gratefully through his tears. "Thanks."

Once Matt finished his narrative, Pidge recounted everything that had happened on Earth between the Kerberos crew's disappearance and her own departure. Matt found himself hooting with incredulity and glee. "You hoodwinked the whole Garrison?"

"Like you always said—"

He joined his voice with hers as he realized what she was going to say: "'What the Garrison doesn't know won't hurt them!'"

Matt laughed and tousled Pidge's hair, which had always been messy but seemed even more so now that it was short and so often tucked into a helmet. "Pidge, I don't know what our family—or the universe—would do without you."

Her eyes softened. "Well, I wouldn't have become a paladin it wasn't for you and Dad. I wouldn't have gone to the Garrison so early, or helped rescue Shiro when he landed, or tried to leave Earth. It was all to find you."

Matt felt a slight pang of something melancholy, somewhere between guilt or sorrow, threatening to embitter the sweetness of their reunion. He was sorry that Pidge had experienced so much sorrow and suffering, first on Earth and then in space. Yet at the same time, having her be a part of this cause, able to fight at his side, excited him and made him feel proud. "I probably shouldn't be happy about you being out here, mixed up in the war … but I can't help being glad you're with me."

Pidge smiled with those funny catlike dimples. "You know what I like to think about? How surprised and furious Iverson will be when he finds out that I was under his nose, _and_ did what I said I would—found out what happened to you."

Matt returned her grin. "I want to be there with a camera when that happens!"

Once his replacement arrived, Pidge led Matt out to the Green Voltron Lion. Matt whistled, impressed by its size and awed by its sophisticated technology. He had never seen anything like it, even in all his months of living among aliens.

Watching Pidge at the controls was weird. Matt had been aware of Pidge's ambition to be a pilot, but had not expected her to achieve that goal so young. And yet, she seemed at home in the cockpit that was the Lion's mouth.

"So, who are the other paladins?" he asked. "They're also from Earth, right? Anyone I know?"

"Hm …" Pidge cupped her chin in her hand, feigning thoughtfulness, all with a mischievous look on her face. "They're all from the Garrison, but most of them are closer to my age than yours. There's one I definitely want to be a surprise, and some you might've known. Oh—did you know Keith at the Garrison? A friend of Shiro's?"

"Keith," Matt murmured, thinking back. "Yeah, I remember seeing him a few times. Shiro mentioned him too."

"Well, he was the one who helped us find a Voltron lion on Earth."

"What? But … that would mean … aliens came to Earth before?"

"Yeah. And actually, Keith apparently is part Galra, which means someone in his family tree met aliens."

Matt was surprisingly disappointed to hear this. For a long time, his dream, and his father's dream, had been to be the first humans to meet aliens. He had thought that that dream had come true, albeit in a twisted way, when they were captured. But now he could not even claim that honor, such as it was.

Pidge went on blithely. "Anyway, Keith was a paladin for a while. He actually led Voltron when our usual leader was away. But recently, he started training with the Blade of Marmora, and recently he left to work with them full-time. So we're still in touch, but I don't know if you'll get to see him in person."

"So, where exactly are we going?"

"Planet Olkarion. You'll love it there; the natural environment is basically married to the technology. It's become a safe haven for refugees, so we've been helping them resettle or travel to other parts of the universe. A lot of them are signing up to fight with us against the Galra."

When they arrived, the Green Lion roared to announce their triumphant arrival. Several people in armor similar to Pidge's lined up to greet the siblings as they disembarked. Matt did not recognize the former Galaxy Garrison cadets Hunk and Lance, but it was easy to see that they were from Earth. Even Coran the Altean looked almost like a human.

Matt was floored when he saw Princess Allura. In all his time in space, he had never encountered an alien race that looked so much like Earth's humans, and he had certainly never met one so beautiful by Earth standards. First, he felt incredulous; then euphoric, like an excited little kid; then he was trying to sound as mature, formal, and flattering as he could; then he was fending off the furious looks Lance shot him. If looks could kill, Pidge would have been avenging her brother's death.

Then, beyond Allura and Lance, Matt saw Shiro.

Matt had heard about the Champion of the gladiator arena, and had long worried about him, but he had not known whether he was still alive. Shiro looked somewhat different—his undercut was gone, and his bangs were white—but it was undeniably him. Pidge had neglected to mention him so Matt would be surprised!

Matt did not know how to react—they had been as close as any astronauts on a long-term mission could be, but they had always been professional about it. Shiro had been his senior in the Garrison, and was definitely his senior as a Voltron paladin, so Matt kept his tone respectful, even though it was saturated with relief. "It's so good to see you—uh, sir." Matt held out a hand, which Shiro took, and then pulled so Matt fell into a hug. Matt welcomed it.

"Pidge never gave up on finding you," Shiro told Matt.

"Yeah." Matt looked over his shoulder at Pidge, who grinned proudly. "She can be pretty stubborn at times."

"And I want you to know that all of us will help you find your father."

"Thanks." Matt felt increasingly confident that he would find his father, now that he had Pidge and several allies from Earth to help him do so.

Pidge gestured to guide her brother's attention. "Matt, this is the Castle of Lions."

Matt looked up at the massive, elegant white structure. "Whoa. Nice ship."

"Let me take you on a tour." Pidge grabbed his hand and pulled him along after her.

Matt was consistently impressed by the high-quality technology and facilities, and occasionally bemused by its eccentric features (like an Earth cow and a machine that squirted out food goo). It was clear that the castle was as much the paladins' home as it was their headquarters. Every room had a story, or multiple stories, which kept Pidge chattering as they went from one part of the ship to another.

It had been a long time since Matt had seen anyone so happy and excited, and for that person to be his sister made him happier than he had been since leaving Earth.

Hunk was the only one who intruded on the siblings' bonding time, offering them milkshakes he had made from the cow's milk. Matt could hardly believe he was tasting that sweet Earth treat again, after months of living off alien military rations and whatever scraps the rebels could scavenge or steal on the black market.

It would have been natural for Matt to feel jealous when Pidge talked about everything she and her friends had done together. But ultimately, he was glad to know that Pidge had been living in a nice home with good people. He had adapted to the irregular, unpredictable life of a fugitive, but he was an adult. Pidge was still in the process of growing up, which meant she needed a stable living situation more than he did. Of course, fighting in a war was not exactly stable, but having a home and a family to come back to after each mission and battle was a great blessing.

The strangest thing about being together again was how natural it felt, even after spending almost two years apart and having so many separate experiences. Even though they had both changed a great deal, their bond was as strong as it had ever been, if not even stronger. They had so much to tell each other about, and new things they could bond over, like cooperating in battle and collaborating in research.

With Pidge and Hunk's help, Matt was able to finally break the codes he had been struggling with, and they were able to observe Galra troop movements almost live. But as soon as they made the breakthrough, they overheard some startling news: Emperor Zarkon was alive and had ordered his forces to mobilize around a particular location.

That was when Matt got to see how Team Voltron operated. Shiro and Allura seemed to have the most authority, but everyone on the team had their say—including Pidge, who proposed that they use cloaking to go in close and find out who Zarkon was attacking.

Matt appreciated that Shiro pointed out the danger she would be in if she went alone. Honestly, that was what he should have done. He was already fairly used to thinking of Pidge as a competent soldier. But Pidge was not suggesting that they split up the team. "I'm pretty sure I could upgrade Voltron with cloaking. We could all go."

Lance punched her playfully. "Were you just waiting for your big brother to show up before you rolled that one out?"

Pidge smiled, a little sheepish but mostly proud. "It's something I've been working on for a while, but I can't pilot the Green Lion and operate the cloaking at the same time." She side-eyed Matt, sly and hopeful. "But if I had a co-pilot …"

"Absolutely," Matt agreed, offering his hand, which she took and squeezed, palm-to-palm.

It did not take long for Pidge to show Matt how to use the cloaking tech. He sat in the chair behind Pidge's in the Green Lion, and the five lions formed Voltron before he ran the cloaking sequence. Then they flew in to survey the cosmic battlefield.

The many Galra fleets seemed to be attacking a single Galra station. The paladins were bemused as to what this could mean. Then three ships Matt had never seen before, maneuvering faster than he had imagined possible, emerged and flew through the barrage toward Voltron.

"It's Lotor." Allura's voice was hard.

Matt had heard rumors and reports about Lotor, who had taking up leadership after Zarkon's defeat. But he was surprised to learn that Lotor was working _against_ the Galra Empire, not helping them. Besides the Blade of Marmora, the rebels had not seen any division within the Galra Empire.

Lotor's high-speed ships flew so close to Voltron that it ruined the cloaking sequence. Voltron was visible and the paladins had to engage with the Galra fleets that turned their attention on it. Shiro shouted the commands, and Matt got to see what Hunk's bayard could do, hitting multiple targets in several fell swoops.

Then, for the first time, Matt heard the voice of Emperor Zarkon himself, broadcast through a transmission addressed to all Galra officers. Both his tone and his message were eerie, unnerving. Though Matt was considerably braver than he had been a year ago, and assured of his and his allies' safety with Voltron on their side, that voice was frightening even to him.

Apparently, while the Holt family's ties were being restored and strengthened, the ties within Zarkon's family were weakening and being severed. Zarkon ordered his people to approach Lotor with prejudice and kill him on sight.

After the message ended, the paladins sat in stunned silence for a few moments. Finally Hunk broke the silence by asking, "What do we do now?"

"There's nothing more for us to do here," Allura said finally. With that they turned Voltron around and headed back to the Castle of Lions.

Matt did not want to think about leaving. While he knew he could not stay permanently, he had hoped he might be able to spend a few quintents with Pidge and her "found family." But all these new developments—Zarkon being alive, Lotor being a fugitive, and the paladins of Voltron being potential allies—were things Matt knew he ought to discuss with the rebels. After talking it over with Pidge and Shiro, they agreed that after he had rested, he would borrow an Altean pod and rejoin the rebels.

"But there's one thing we need to do first," Pidge said with a gleam in her eye.

"What's that?" Matt asked warily.

"You and I need to play … _Mercury Gameflux II_!"

Matt choked on his food goo, which should have been impossible but somehow he managed it. " _What?_ "

"We found it at a store that sold stuff from Earth. That's where we got Kaltenecker—she was free with purchase!"

Matt howled with laughter. Apparently wonders never ceased in space, especially where his sister was concerned.

They spent hours playing the video game. Lance insisted on playing against the winner, but that turned out to be Pidge, which meant Matt not have to risk being humiliated by the one paladin who might resent his presence. He cheered for Pidge while Hunk hollered advice to Lance, until Shiro came in to make sure there was no emergency.

Saying goodbye the next day was strange. Matt and Pidge could expect to be in regular contact and see each other in person in the near future. But they could hardly be casual about parting, when their previous farewell had been followed by such a long separation, and now that they understood what high stakes they faced.

"I never expected to have this much fun in space," Matt told his hosts. "I didn't realize how much I missed that. So thanks."

"You're welcome here anytime," Allura said graciously, making Matt's insides flutter. "And you and your allies in the rebel alliance can always call on Voltron for help."

"I'll be sure to tell them that. We need all the help we can get."

* * *

Music: "Better Together" by Jack Johnson


	25. Hero in Me

_Published September 14, 2018_

"Hero in Me"

* * *

Truth will exist even if the world perishes. ~ St. Augustine

* * *

Matt and Pidge exchanged messages every other day and had video chats every few quintents. This was half out of necessity as their respective associates coordinated their forces, and half out of the desire to see and hear each other again (even if not in person), to make sure they were okay and reassure themselves that this new stage in their relationship was real. Matt wondered if this was how adult siblings interacted after leaving their parents' home and going their separate ways. It was not a bad way to live.

After learning how and when to watch the Voltron shows, Matt got his rebel friends to watch the broadcasts with him. He stopped inviting them to join him after the show started to get weird, like a parody of the real paladins. During one of their video chats, Matt was going to make a point of correcting the science, but Pidge told him not to bring it up, so he let it go.

He had to stop watching the shows himself as the rebels became increasingly busy preparing for the Voltron Alliance's first and hopefully last major offensive against the Galra Empire.

Shiro devised the plan, using the Blade of Marmora's intelligence and Pidge's Galra-tracker. He tasked Matt and Captain Olia with leading an attack on a Zaiforge cannon over the planet Teq. Meanwhile the Blades (including Keith, who Shiro said had left Voltron to train with them) would attack the second cannon on the surface of Senfama, and Voltron would take control of Naxzela, the only Galra-occupied planet left in a swath of liberated planets.

Matt and Pidge met up and together used the rebels' transponder encryption to secure communications with the entire Voltron Coalition. It was hard to say what was more exciting, getting to work together on a project, or knowing that they were helping enable a massive victory.

Once Allura gave her inspiring speech, it was time to part ways.

"I'll see you when this is over," Pidge promised. She held out a fist, and Matt bumped it with his own.

"Good luck out there," he said. Part of him wondered if he should say more, but in the past few weeks they had already expressed how proud they were of each other, how happy they were to be working together, and how much they loved each other. Now was not the time to be emotional, and though the missions ahead of them were going to be difficult, they had enough advantages that they would probably both be alright.

It felt strange participating in the same battle, but not physically crossing paths. Matt had to take his mind off them and focus on his own mission. The Zaiforge cannon's turrets had shields that they could not penetrate. Olia shouted for the rebel crafts to pull back.

Then the cannon powered up and fired its purple energy beam. Matt, Olia, Rolo, Nyma, and their crews could only watch as a third of the rebel fleet destroyed instantaneously.

It may have been the most shocking and sobering thing Matt had ever personally witnessed. Before today he had only ever heard of the Galra's ability to destroy entire planets and peoples. Now he could see that kind of power right before him, and knew he and his allies would be its next targets.

While the rebel ships tried to avoid the cannon's fire, Olia shouted to the Blades through their comms, and then relayed to Matt that the cannon on Senfama should be used to take out the shield. While they waited, Olia ordered all the rebel ships to take cover behind a large asteroid, but Galra fighters followed and attacked them on that side while the Zaiforge cannon fired on the asteroid from the opposite side. The rebels knew they could not hold out for long.

The asteroid was just breaking up when the purple beam from the Blades' commandeered cannon appeared and struck the one attacking the rebels. The shield went down, and they moved in to take control of the cannon.

Matt felt wicked for thinking it, but it was satisfying to hold the commander at gunpoint, after she had just killed so many of their allies and tried to kill the rest of them. Keith reported that he was ready to provide the Taujeerians with cover, and Olia responded that she was ready to provide backup.

For a short while things went well; they hit their targets and got positive news from their allies. Coran informed them when the communications satellite became operational again, but Shiro said it did not matter at this point. He seemed to be right, until another Galra cruiser approached Naxzela.

Once Sector Zar Niomofor was clear, Matt tried to get a line on the battle cruiser; but then the cannon powered down. When he asked Keith if the Zaiforge cannon on Senfama was still operational, the answer was negative. Voltron and the Coalition no longer had artillery support.

Almost a varga passed with nothing to do but wait tensely for news. Neither the Blades nor the paladins spoke to the rebels for a long while. Coran delivered updates on how the Coalition was doing; things seemed to be going well on the various planets they were liberating.

Suddenly, Keith's voice came over the comms. _"Matt, something's wrong. I can't reach Voltron."_

"We can fly to Naxzela to check on them," Matt suggested.

 _"No. I need your help. I can't explain why, but I know we need to attack that fleet."_

Matt was confused. "I thought the fleet had stopped."

 _"It has, but we're afraid it has something to do with Voltron."_

Matt did not know Keith well, but he knew Keith was close to Shiro and just as determined to protect him as Matt was determined to help Pidge. "We're with you."

 _"Copy that. Good to have you along."_

One of the rebels noted the irony of the mighty Voltron, defender of the universe, needing help rather than giving it. Matt chose to ignore the comment rather than argue with it. He boarded a transport with Olia and an Unilu rebel, and they took off along with a few other small rebel vessels. They soon caught up with Keith, who had stolen a Galra fighter to travel to the fleet.

Shortly after that, the paladins came back online. _"Keith! Can you hear me?"_

 _"Shiro! Where are you? Is everything okay?"_

 _"Not for long if we don't stop Zarkon's witch. She must be aboard that battle cruiser."_

 _"I'm way ahead of you, and I brought some backup."_

By then the rebel ships were flying in formation with Keith's fighter. "Rebel Squad is en route," Olia reported.

"Good to have Voltron back in the fight," Matt cheered.

The rebels followed Keith, who led them toward the battle cruiser; but it seemed to have a different shape than all the others they had seen. "What the ruggle is that?" Olia exclaimed.

Matt tried to analyze it on his screen. "It looks like some sort of weapon attached to the cruiser."

Before they could get close enough to begin attacking, the cruiser fired on the rebel formation. "Evasive maneuvers!" Olia shouted.

Shiro's voice came back on. _"Coran, you need to get as far away from Naxzela as you can immediately. Pick up any members of the coalition who are nearby, but go."_

 _"W-what's happened?"_

Allura answered, _"Naxzela is a bomb and it's about to go off."_

It took one dizzying moment for Matt to process this information, adding it up with the need to destroy the battle cruiser, or at least the weapon attached to it: if the witch was controlling the bomb-planet from there, destroying it would prevent the detonation.

Keith's stolen Galra fighter and the rebel vehicles fired on the cruiser with everything they had, but they could not break through. Matt reached out to Keith, who had stopped flying after one of the wings of his fighter was damaged. "We'll never penetrate those shields!" Matt was coming dangerously close to panic. Since they had come here instead of fleeing, not only Voltron but the entire rebel alliance might be lost in Naxzela's explosion. Both Holt siblings might die, without either of their parents seeing them or even finding out what had happened to them.

Keith's expression and tone darkened as he said, "Maybe not with our weapons."

Matt watched through the windows, first with confusion, then with incredulity, as Keith started to fly toward the battle cruiser. "Keith, what are you doing?" Matt realized the answer to his own question and shouted with desperate, almost outraged horror, "Keith, no!"

It was like Shiro's sacrifice all over again. This time Matt understood what was happening, but in both cases he was utterly unable to prevent it. Yes, speaking utilitarianly, it was better for one person to die than dozens, but Keith should not have done that without consulting the others, getting permission, saying goodbye.

Matt would have kept yelling if something else had not caught his attention. Another ship arrived on the scene, of a type Matt had only seen once before, the day Zarkon banished his son Lotor. The comet ship aimed and fired on the shield surrounding the cruiser and its strange weapon.

Keith seemed to realize what was happening and pulled out of his trajectory at the last tick. The blast penetrated the shield and destroyed the weapon. A doboshe or two later, the cruiser made the jump to lightspeed, disappearing from the scene and leaving nothing but debris.

Over the comms, the rebels could hear Coran cheering and Shiro congratulating Keith, but their celebratory mood died when Keith informed them who had saved them. Matt and the rebels just sat in bewilderment, relieved at being alive but suspicious of the newcomer who had unexpectedly saved them.

Then a voice Matt had never heard before spoke over the allies' comms. It was deep, kind of silky, with a cunning edge that made his skin crawl. _"Attention paladins of Voltron and rebel fighters. I know we've had our differences in the past, but … I think it is time that we had a discussion."_

After a moment, Shiro answered, _"This is Shiro, paladin of the Black Lion. Please hold while we confer."_

 _"Certainly."_

It took a little while for the paladins to negotiate, first with each other, then with their allies, and finally with Lotor himself, whether to meet him. He _had_ just saved their lives, so some felt it only fair to hear what he had to say; but given how he had conquered planets and fought Voltron in the past, they had good reason to be wary.

After much ambivalence and argument, Shiro instructed the rebels to lead Lotor to the Blades' location, where they would all regroup. He carefully avoided specifying the location, so Lotor could not relay it to his generals or the Galra.

The Blades were ready when Lotor, Keith, and the rebels arrived on Senfama. Everyone with a weapon had it trained on Lotor as he emerged from his ship, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender. A few masked Blades apprehended him, slapping on handcuffs and putting him in the Galra outpost's holding cell. Matt wanted to give Keith a talking-to after the stunt he had tried to pull, but Keith insisted on watching Lotor while they waited for Voltron to arrive, and Matt had to regroup with the rebels, who had to figure out what their next move would be. Should they return to the Zaiforge cannon and make sure it stayed under rebel control? Or try to neutralize Naxzela so it could never be used as a weapon?

Matt was glad when Voltron and the Castle of Lions arrived. He ran up to the Green Lion and caught Pidge in a hug as she came out. "I didn't think we were going to make it," he admitted.

"But we did," Pidge said, both reminding him and marveling at it herself.

"Yeah … thanks to Lotor," Matt said with a grimace. Pidge made a sound of discomfort. They let go of each other, and Matt glanced at the other paladins and, beyond them, the building where Lotor was being held. "So, what's the plan with him?"

"Shiro and Allura are going to talk to him. Then we'll decide what to do with him."

After some time, Shiro, Allura, Olia, Keith, and the Blades' leader Kolivan called everyone together to announce their decision: the paladins would take custody of Lotor, confining him to a cell in the Castle of Lions. They would continue to interrogate him and see if he could provide accurate information about the Galra that could help them in the war effort.

It was clear from the rebels' reactions that they were not all happy about this arrangement. It was the first time many of them had really operated on the principle of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." But Shiro insisted that only the paladins of Voltron would act on any information Lotor provided, so no one else in the Coalition would be at risk.

Before they adjourned to contact their other allies, Allura addressed the assembly. "Before we part ways, I want to thank you personally for the risks you took, the courage you showed, and the sacrifices you made today. Thanks to you, we have won back a third of the Galra Empire. But that means we have a great deal of work ahead of us. This victory is only the beginning."

When she was done, Matt folded his arms and turned to Pidge. "I don't like this. I don't like him staying in the same place as you and your team and your lions, and I don't like you guys planning and carrying out missions based entirely on his intel."

"There's no place more secure than the Castle, and no one else really wants to have custody of him," Pidge pointed out

That made sense. Lotor was a liability; keeping him around was too great a risk and responsibility for the rebels or the Blades to handle. "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer," Matt muttered. He was starting to dislike all the clichés that he found applied to himself and his friends.

"You be careful with him, alright?" Matt said.

"Of course," Pidge replied. "And I'll be seeing you soon. There's a lot to do now that we've liberated all these planets, and I've got a running list of projects you can help with."

Matt grinned. "Excellent." As sad and frightening as the day had been, they had a lot to be thankful for and many good things to look forward to.

* * *

Music: "Hero in Me" by Emily Osment

Author's Note: I'm planning on having a conversation between Matt and Keith after the battle in "Make Straight His Paths," which is why I didn't put one here.


	26. Days in the Sun

_Published October 13, 2018_

"Days in the Sun"

* * *

Our deepest hungers are not for food and drink, not for amusements and recreations, not for property and wardrobes, not for notoriety and gossip. We hunger for truth, we thirst to drink beauty, we yearn to celebrate, we stretch out to love and be loved. This is why anything less than Everything is not enough. ~ Father Thomas Dubay, _Happy Are You Poor_

* * *

Sam's time in the work camp was the lowest point of his life. Being separated from Shiro and Matt—especially Matt—was almost unbearable. They were no longer together to keep each other's spirits up.

Sam had lost everything, except his life, and it was hard to be grateful for that when there seemed to be nothing left to live for. But he knew Colleen and the kids would not want him to think that way. They would want him to live and find a way back to them.

Being transferred to the prison for scientists was a mixed blessing. The conditions were somewhat better—there was no vermin, and the labor was not painful or tedious—but being forced to research and develop weapons for the Galra was humiliating and demoralizing. Now they were being put to work that they knew was wrong, would benefit the Galra and hurt innocent people. When any of the scientists tried to stall or sabotage their work, they suffered for not meeting quotas. Worse, their fellow prisoners were punished in their stead.

Sam received a crash course in quintessence, a substance he had never known of. The other scientists were amazed by his ignorance, and that only made them all the more impressed by how quickly he memorized new information and mastered new skills. Sam had always enjoyed learning, and he wanted to learn as much as he could in order to help himself and, in the future, Earth; but he tried to slow himself down, knowing that the faster he progressed in this work, the faster the Galra's technology would advance.

The only news they received of what was happening outside the prison came from new arrivals, and they were few and far between. After Sam had been in the prison for some time—it was hard to tell how it compared to Earth's time, but he estimated it had been months—new prisoners started to share rumors of Voltron, a legendary superweapon that had been hidden for years and was now being used to fight Zarkon and his forces.

One day, a new prisoner arrive who gave Sam strange looks. He found an opportunity to discreetly approach him and whisper, "Are you from Earth?"

"Yes. Have you seen anyone like me? Another prisoner?"

"No, not personally, and not a prisoner. But they say the new paladins are from your home planet."

The words were meant as a warning. The prisoner who whispered them to Sam suspected that eventually the Galra would question him about Earth and whether he knew anything about these paladins.

But Sam's alarm was not for his own safety, but rather for Earth. When he and Shiro and Matt left, the people of Earth had been ignorant of any alien life in the universe. Had that changed? Had the Galra come to Earth and put it through the same horrors it imposed on other planets—occupation, exploitation of resources, eventually complete destruction?

Another time, after the roll call, a new prisoner asked him, "Holt, is it?"

"Yes."

"Do you know an Earthling named Matt Holt?"

Sam's eyes widened, and he felt more alert than he had in a long time. "My son. How do you know him?"

"He's making a name for himself as a rebel. He has a price on his head."

Fear and pride swelled up like twin waves. So Matt was free, and had found a way to fight the Galra. Maybe something similar had happened to Shiro. Maybe they were searching for him.

These scraps of news were like receiving a mouthful of water when dying of thirst. Then, one day, it was as though some floodgates opened. The alarms went off, but then the automated security system shut down altogether. The prisoners were bewildered. Those who were in their cells did not dare to come out.

Before they could decide whether to investigate, the intruders barged in. They were a trio of tall, female aliens in Galra armor, though they did not look entirely Galra. Perhaps they had mixed heritage. One of them wielded a small blaster weapon.

Was this an attack, or the rescue they had hoped for?

"We're looking for a prisoner from Planet Earth," the armed, blue-skinned woman said, her voice ringing over the work area.

Sam did not blame anyone for what happened next. He preferred to believe that the few who looked at him did so instinctively, not intending to betray him. It may not have mattered, since the part-Galra women seemed to register his appearance when they saw him. They looked at each other and nodded as though in agreement. They must have seen other Earthlings before. Had they seen Matt and Shiro? Or others from Earth?

"You're coming with us." The furry woman, the biggest of the intruders, looked at the other scientists. "You lot stay here. Anyone who comes out is going to get hurt."

Sam did not resist as they seized him and led him out; he knew only too well the not only he but the other scientists would suffer if he tried to fight.

Outside, he saw that the automated sentries had been dismembered. These part-Galra women must have fought they way through the prison's defenses. Were they acting outside Galra law?

They kept Sam bound or handcuffed aboard their ship. They spent a long while traveling before the pilot, who seemed to be their leader, opened a communication frequency. "Emperor Zarkon."

Sam, who had been alternating between deep thinking and lethargy, snapped to attention at the sound of that name. Were these women high-ranking enough that they could contact their emperor so easily?

 _"What do you want?"_ Zarkon's voice was full of contempt and distrust.

"We have something in our possession we think you'd be interested in. We are willing to trade it for our safe passage back into the Galra ranks."

There was only a brief pause before Zarkon replied, _"I'm listening."_

The colorful Galra with an antenna-like appendage on her head pushed Sam into view of the screen.

So this was Zarkon. Sam thought he looked more like a machine than an organic being. He wore some kind of mask or helmet as well as armor that looked like it was being powered by quintessence.

What could the Emperor want with him? Did they have a special assignment for him? Or would they use him as a test subject in their experiments? He had heard gruesome rumors about that. If Zarkon wanted information, Sam was not sure he would be able to withhold it under torture or duress. If they threatened Shiro or Matt or the planet Earth …

The trio's leader introduced him. "Records say this is Samuel Holt from Planet Earth, the same planet as the paladins of Voltron."

"The Green Paladin asked the Puigians to contact her if they had news of him. Apparently she's been asking all their allies about him."

She? Who could they be talking about? Colleen? One of his female colleagues from the Galaxy Garrison? He wondered, again, if Katie was now old enough to be enrolled at the Garrison.

They took him away from the screen, so Sam did not hear the details of their arrangements, but before long, Sam was brought face-to-masked-face with the Galra Emperor, the creature responsible, at the highest level, for his imprisonment and the exploitation and destruction of so many worlds. He was the one who had ordered that Sam, Shiro, and Matt be brought in for interrogation.

"Paladins of Voltron."

Sam's eyes widened, and he tried to lift his head, but the colorful alien pushed it back down, hard.

"I am making a one-time offer. I have someone of value to you." Zarkon stepped to the side so Sam and the female Galra were visible. Sam took this as his cue, and probably only opportunity, to raise his head and look at the screen.

There they were: five Earthlings and two human-looking aliens in a large, white-trimmed room. He did not recognize most of them, but Shiro stood near the front, and Matt stood next to a chair—in which _Katie_ was seated.

There was no mistaking them, though their appearances had changed as much as Sam's during their separation. Shiro's bangs were white, and his left arm looked like it was made of metal. Matt looked like a soldier turned hobo, his hair shaggy, and his clothes mismatched and rugged. Katie, his sweet Katie, sporting some of Matt's hand-me-down clothes, now had short hair and wore what looked like Matt's glasses.

She stood up from the chair, stricken with horror. _"Dad."_ Her voice was unmistakable even in that one syllable.

"I will hand him over, and in exchange, you give me my son Lotor."

Sam had heard about Lotor, even caught a glimpse of him once or twice when the scientists' prison was under his command. His reputation among the prisoners was mixed: he was said to be more merciful than the average Galra officer or soldier, but he was still feared for his cunning and fighting prowess.

Dozens of questions and hypotheses churned in Sam's mind. How had the paladins ended up with Lotor in their custody? Was he their prisoner? Their ally? How strange, trading one party's father for another party's son.

"Bring me Lotor and the prisoner is yours. Meet my demands if you want to see the Earthling alive." With that, Zarkon turned off the screen and ordered that Sam be taken to a holding cell.

Sam wished he had more information, wished he knew what was going on. He hated being ignorant of the relevant facts, and he hated feeling helpless. The desire to take action was one of the things that drove him as a scientist and military officer. Now there was nothing he could do except wait to see what move his captors and allies decided to make. But he once he found out, he promised himself, he would do whatever was in his power to get back to his kids and get them all back to Earth.

 **Music:** "Days in the Sun" from _Beauty and the Beast_ (2017).


	27. It's My Turn Now

_Published February 7, 2019_

Author's Note: I'm not totally happy with this chapter, but I felt bad about leaving it untouched for so long, so here is what I have.

"It's My Turn Now"

* * *

The sun shall no longer be your light by day,  
Nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you;  
But the Lord will be to you an everlasting light,  
And your God your glory.  
Your sun shall no longer go down,  
Nor shall your moon withdraw itself;  
For the Lord will be your everlasting light,  
And the days of your mourning shall be ended.

~ Isaiah 60:19-20

* * *

After months of cautiously testing the veracity of Lotor's intelligence, it turned out he had been holding back the information that held most personal importance to the paladins: the last known location of Commander Samuel Holt.

Matt and Pidge happened to be together when they learned the news. They did not waste time getting angry about Lotor keeping this information to himself for so long; they were too caught up with acting on it. Any delay would run the risk of missing the opportunity, so rather than wait for the rest of Team Voltron to catch up with them, they accepted Rolo and Nyma's offer to help.

During the journey on the Green Lion, Pidge almost fell into her old habit of worrying out loud about everything that could go wrong. Matt reassured her as best he could. Having someone to support helped him hold himself together despite the suspense and apprehension.

It became clear right away that something funny was going on. The prison seemed to already have been infiltrated, the security system hacked, the sentries disabled or destroyed.

The scientists looked at the newcomers with fear and followed them with trepidation. Matt could not blame them; he knew how they felt. He remembered his own bewilderment when Te-osh and her comrades rescued him. Even when rescue was what you wanted most, it was hard to believe in it when it finally seemed possible.

While Rolo and Nyma guided the others out, Matt went to the cells in the back, calling out and asking passersby for Sam Holt. Even when it seemed everyone had filed past, he checked every cell, opened every door, to see if anyone was asleep, unconscious, or unable to move on their own.

Finally Matt arrived at the last cell in the block. Either his father was in there, or he was no longer in this facility.

He opened the door, and found an empty cell.

His father was not here.

He had to break the news to Pidge.

The escape was rough, but everyone made it alive. The hardest part, Matt found, was not freefalling almost to his death, nor trying to defy the laws of physics with the overburdened shuttle. The hardest part was entering the Green Lion's cockpit alone, facing Pidge's hopeful face, and informing her that their father was not there.

"No," Pidge said, unable to accept it. "No! Dad! Where are you?" She started to push past Matt, but he caught her in his arms and held her as she sank to her knees and broke down crying.

She had been so strong for so long. Her perseverance had enabled her to become a paladin, find her calling, and find her brother. But sometimes strength and perseverance were not rewarded after all, at least not in the desires time or place or way.

"Don't give up, Pidge, We know Dad's alive. We'll find him," Matt promised.

They dropped off the escaped scientists on Olkarion, where social workers could help them contact friends or family and arrange transportation if they wished to leave. Then Matt accompanied Pidge back to the Castle of Lions, not wanting to leave her alone when she was missing her father so much.

It was at that moment, when Pidge was feeling more despondent than ever about her father's absence and unknown fate, that Zarkon sent the paladins an ultimatum.

Neither Matt nor anyone on Team Voltron had ever seen Pidge so irrational, so single-minded, so biased, as in the minutes and hours after they received the transmission. Even Shiro and Matt had a difficult time reasoning with her as they discussed how to approach the situation. It was not necessarily the most dangerous situation any of them had faced, but it had higher personal stakes than any other.

Looking back, Pidge was angry with herself for not foreseeing the hologram trick. She herself had used it to deceive and distract her enemies on multiple occasions. Shiro and Lotor's concerns proved to be justified: Zarkon double-crossed them and wanted them to surrender the lions. But then Lotor pulled a surprise of his own, attacking Zarkon with the black bayard that had once belonged to him.

Sam was pushed back onto the shuttle after barely disembarking it. He barely got a glimpse of his children and Shiro before the part-Galra generals ushered him back inside.

Tied to a chair, trying not to picture the battle now happening on the ground, the only thing Sam could think to do was pray. _God, if you're there, don't let us lose each other again._

The answer, if that was what it was, came instantly. Pidge, Matt, and Shiro boarded and started fighting the generals, mostly out of Sam's sight until Pidge cut him free. They hardly had a moment of relief before they saw the ship was going to crash.

It was Sam who took the controls and steered the shuttle away from the ground. He had finally done something to help—had, in fact, saved their lives. But that satisfaction paled next to hugging his children again for the first time in years.

Shiro called their attention back to the battle on the ground, where Lotor and Zarkon were still fighting. The scene was so shocking, when it was over it took Sam and Matt and the paladins several ticks to realize they had just witnessed a historic moment, the fall of a tyrant, the end of a reign. Because the Lions had protected Lotor and drawn Zarkon's attention toward them, Lotor had successfully done what none of them had been able to do. He killed Zarkon.

After a few moments of shocked silence, Shiro took command of the situation. He directed everyone to meet on the ground so they could collect Lotor and the Altean shuttle.

Having to deal with Zarkon's sudden death and Lotor's apparent alliance ruined the kind of welcome Pidge had wanted to give her father when she eventually found him. He needed rest and medical treatment, and she wanted to spend time catching up with him. Now his return was overshadowed by this much larger development.

Fortunately Shiro and Allura understood and let Pidge help Sam get settled in the Castle while they sorted things out. Hunk quickly fixed him a meal and Coran found him a change of clothes. They sat in silence in the dining room while Sam ate.

"This is good food goo," he said to break the silence.

"Are you really okay?" Pidge asked. "You must have questions."

He started with the one that seemed most simple. "Does everyone call you Pidge now?"

She smiled crookedly, revealing the dimples he had missed so much. "Yeah. It was my alias for a while, and then it just kind of stuck."

"Should I call you that?"

She shrugged one shoulder. "It's up to you. I'll answer to either."

His next question did not have such a simple answer. "How in the universe did you end up in space—and a paladin of Voltron?"

"It's a long story. One of the Voltron lions was hidden on Earth—not far from the Garrison, actually—and we found it, and it brought us to the Castle of Lions … and things just kind of took off from there. Literally."

"Have you been in contact with the Galaxy Garrison?"

"No. We haven't had any contact with Earth since we left. There's been too much to do, and it would've taken too much time, and they probably wouldn't have wanted to know about any of it."

"So the war hasn't gotten that far?"

"No."

It was as though a weight Sam had been carrying for the better part of two years was suddenly lifted. Earth was safe, at least as safe as could be, for the time being.

The three Holts debriefed on the most important points in their separation, but there were some parts of their experiences that they were reluctant to share. They agreed to let those stories wait until they were ready to talk about them. Sam was relieved to learn that they had freed the scientists who had been his fellow prisoners.

The day after the rescue, Sam took the longest bath he had had in years, cut his hair, and trimmed his beard. When he joined the others for breakfast, he looked different from both the scientist-commander and the Galra prisoner. He still looked older than he had on Earth, but he looked wise and disciplined too.

"Wow!" Matt remarked. "Looking good, Dad."

Sam stroked the beard, smiling. "I thought about shaving it off, but it's kind of grown on me."

Pidge nodded in approval. "I like it."

They decided to go to Olkarion to regroup and inform the Voltron Coalition of Zarkon's death. Pidge was thrilled to show Sam the planet, her favorite other than Earth, and introduce him to Ryner. Seeing her father wear Olkari garb and work alongside her alien mentor felt both surreal and strangely fitting. As she had expected, Sam was awed by Olkarion's beauty, peace, and technological wonders.

"So much has changed so fast," he said, looking out through the window of the tower that held the ion cannon.

"For the better," Pidge agreed.

Matt's tone was not so optimistic. "Yeah, well, Zarkon might be dead, but the war's not over yet." As their eyes met, a silent moment of realization and mutual understanding passed between the two siblings. They could not return to Earth until their work with the rebels and paladins was done.

Pidge tried to tell him about the legacy of the Voltron paladins so he could better understand her role and responsibility. She was not as good a storyteller as Coran, and she got more pleasure out of showing him all of the Green Lion's special features.

"It's just amazing," Sam said, staring up at the gargantuan robot. All this technology—it used to exist only in my dreams." He turned around to face them, smiling now. "I can't wait to tell your mother all about this. Wait until she sees you two, so grown up!"

Pidge and Matt glanced uneasily at each other, realizing they could not put off this conversation any longer. Pidge could barely meet Sam's eyes as she said, "Well, the thing is, between Voltron and the rebels, Matt and I have a lot of work to do before we can go back to Earth."

"Yeah," Matt agreed, "we can't leave until the Galra are defeated and we can rest assured Earth will be safe."

Sam blinked at them, stunned. "What?"

Pidge looked at him sadly, and said as simply as she could: "We can't go home with you, Dad."

There had been many times when Sam informed his family that he would be away for a long time, working across the country, overseas, or in space. Now the situation was reversed, and his children were the ones who had to explain that there were circumstances beyond their control that were keeping them away from their home and family.

It was a decision Sam understood, and could respect and even admire. When Olkarion was attacked, he got to see Voltron in action, and even he and Matt got to help. The episode showed that their fears of further conflict were justified: even though Zarkon was gone, new threats were going to emerge to fill the power vacuum. And what had happened on Olkarion could happen on Earth.

It was clear that the Holts were needed in outer space. But maybe not all of them. Matt and Pidge had developed ties with their respective communities, helping soldiers, scientists, rebels, and refugees from across the universe. But Sam's strongest ties were with the Galaxy Garrison, which was still largely ignorant about the war. The people of Earth needed to know what was happening so they could prepare themselves before the war reached them.

Sam waited until they had a peaceful moment after the battle. The paladins had set Voltron down by the shore to watch the glorious sunset. Matt and Sam took a small hovercraft to join them, and Pidge got up on it with her dad and brother.

He could see the sadness and disappointment in her eyes when he told her he had to leave, but she did not argue with him. She just hugged him again, knowing their time together was limited.

* * *

Music: "It's My Turn Now" by Keke Palmer from _Jump In!_


End file.
